The Summer of Drainage
June 13th, 2006Yesterday I spent a few hours cleaning the rain gutters at my mom’s house. I was on a ladder for the first twenty minutes or so. Then I found a chunk of wasp nest/honeycomb floating in one of the gutters. Then I moved after being swarmed by a couple of insistent wasps. I moved the ladder to a thoroughly plugged downspout and while climbing up, noticed four more disparate and distinct chunks of honeycomb, each with a wasp or two working on it. I had my nephew hit the hose and I blasted the wasps away, but the water really only served to upset them. Kind of like when Leta says “Watch Elmo?” fifty times and then it turns into demands “WATCH ELMO!!” At which point I respond.
With the wasps nests decimated, I cleared the downspout and decided that I need to forego the ladder altogether and get on the roof with the hose. But the wasps keep returning. And I had the heebies pretty fiercely. So imagine a nearly translucent white skinned beclogged geek, high pressure hose in hand, shooting random wasps and sending sprays of water into the neighbors yard and onto my nephew, cursing the whole while. It took a lot of affirmation to be calm assertive with the wasp situation.
I’m still creeped out about the wasps just typing this.
Besides the wasps, I had the joy of using the techniques I learned from the sewage line replacement to clear the downspouts on the rain gutters. I had to remove the high pressure sprayer from the hose to get it to fit in the downspouts, but there was a certain satisfaction to hearing the gunk clear and the drain beginning to work. This was an unexpected perk. Not unlike plunging a nasty clog in the commode. Or being able to flush with impunity. o
June 13th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Dude. I go on Dooce and she’s got tarantulas running amok, and I come on here and there are wasps attacking! Gah! Who knew that Utah was so awash in creepy things?
I’m going to be swatting at imaginary stinging insects all day.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Jon,
Thanks for the goose bumps on my head first thing in the morning…yeeeuck!
But I did get a good titter from the visual you created in regards to your own version of the Bellagio fountains on your Mom’s rooftop
June 13th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Ah, to flush with impunity, is there anything better?
Gutters รณ shouldn’t they be designed so as to clean themselves like the stove? Maybe some gas jets that set the leaves and wasps on fire?
June 13th, 2006 at 10:29 am
yuck! i hate wasps! you should get your mom some gutter covers to keep crap out of her gutters.
blech, blech, blech wasps!
June 13th, 2006 at 10:51 am
When I was about eight I was picking blackberries with my six year old brother, when we got attacked by a huge swarm of wasps protecting their blackberry den. As we ran from the swarm, I flung my berry bag back over my head, thinking that is what they wanted. My brother got the worst of the attack, as he went back for my berries. Despite the stinging, he didn’t want to miss out on my mom’s blackberry pie.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Dispatch from Central Florida, Land of the Creepie Crawlies: The thing about wasps is that they have some kind of chemical trail, not unlike ants, which means unless you use pesticide they keep returning. So if you know u are gonna do something like this again, likehood is that there will be long undisturbed wasps.
Luv ya, Big Guy! Jezzie
Get can of Raid, spray area you found them in or the actual honeycomb, and leave to have a drink Recommend non-alcoholic if using roof or ladder.
When u return the wasps/ bees will be gone, but for good.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
flushing with impunity. i love it. it should be the new mantra of the Home Depot Generation.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I’ve got a zero-tolerance wasp policy because, as Jezzie says, they keep coming back. Mine are the offspring of last year’s, like salmon returning to their ancestral river to spawn. Every summer at this time they’re NOISILY nest-building in my office. I search and destroy. Each year fewer return. Today I mashed one (the last one?!) flat and heard myself say out loud, “How d’ya like me now, BITCH?”
I felt pretty stupid when I heard that.
June 13th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I HATE wasps. Wasps and spiders. They just FREAK ME OUT. Snakes, mice, worms… they don’t bother me. Just the wasps and the spiders. I think it has something to do with the fact that they have the ability to sting and to bite. Been stung and bitten in the past and I have no desire to experience either again any time soon.
We go to the lake every weekend to go sailing and the spiders out there are ridiculous. They are absolutely everywhere. Every time I get on the boat, there’s a new set of spider webs all over the place that the spiders have been working on all week in our absence. Then I spend half of the weekend killing spiders. Big ones, little ones. In between freaking out when the wasps start making an appearance that is. My boyfriend just laughs his ass off.
June 13th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
When I moved out of my parents house, I ended up with the world’s crappiest dryer, so I got one of those umbrella style clotheslines and put it up in the backyard. The backyard was also home to two sheds, which were in turn home to a colony each, one of yellow jackets, and the other of dark reddish brown wasps. (Can you see where this is going?) I was putting on my overalls upstairs one evening, when I suddenly was bewildered to feel a burning pain in my leg. Then another. And another. By this time I was screaming so violently that my cousin and then-boyfriend came tearing up the stairs, armed with a baseball bat and a kitchen knife, respectively, to attack the intruder. (As it turns out I had interupted their making out, but that’s another story.) They had the good sense to help me out of my overalls. As soon as I got them off, FOUR giant wasps flew out of them. The fifth one, the stinger, was killed by my hysterical thrashing. Here’s the worst part (even worse than the infidelity): My overalls had been off the clothesline, hanging inside in my closet for three days. Nobody hates wasps more than I.
June 13th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
I had a bunch of wasps in an old mailbox on the side of my gate that I didn’t open. No big deal, right? They live their life, I live mine. Then one summer day when it was very hot they got pissed. One flew very close to my head which I did not enjoy. Then the final straw was when one of them stung my dog who was just looking out the gate, minding her own business. I got up very early the next morning and went to the store for extra poisonous wasp killer and killed them while it was still cool out and they were all at home.
June 15th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Gasoline. Spraying gasoline on wasps’ nests kills the critters outright.