Ever since I blundered into a nest of yellow jackets last week in my own front yard, I’ve been having the most interesting conversations with people. An awful lot of us, it seems, have had the yellow jacket experience, and there’s one thing we agree on: your clothes come off. In fact, they come off so quickly, you may not even realize they’re coming off. It’s almost as if they take themselves off. You look down, and oh my gosh — you’re looking at your birthday suit. Not always a pretty sight, perhaps, but we don’t seem to care.
One woman told me that she and her husband were out with some other folks, looking for Revolutionary War grave sites, hiking up hill and down dale with her leading them, when she stepped directly into a yellow jacket nest. “Stay back, stay back!” she was aware of yelling, but she needn’t have worried: everyone had stopped dead in their tracks, and all were silent except her husband, who shouted in horror, “Evelyn, what are you DOING?”
“I looked down,” she told me, “and do you know, I didn’t have a stitch on — just my shoes — and I didn’t care a bit. I still don’t know how I got my slacks off with my shoes on,” she said, “but it didn’t matter. All in the world I cared about was getting those things off of me.”
Yellow jackets are famously aggressive, and unlike bees, they can sting you over and over again. What’s worse is that their venom contains an “alarm pheromone” which signals the guard wasps of the colony to come join in the attack — so once you’ve aroused one of them to the point where he stings you, you’ve basically aroused all of his cousins, too — and good luck to you. Wasps have big families! It’s best not to run from them, but good luck with that, too.
I have a secluded front yard, which was good, because by the time I streaked across it and up my front steps, I was out of most of my clothes. Alas, my underwear harbored hitchhikers, so even in the house I was shrieking and flailing and leaping around, and saying some words librarians aren’t supposed to know, and it was 11:30 at night before I had the nerve to retrieve my clothing.
Now I have to deal with the nest. “It is often best to wait for Mother Nature, with freezing temperatures in the winter months, to kill off these colonies,” says one of my research sources placidly. But I have company coming in a few weeks. “Get you some gas, and pour it down the entry into the nest,” said more than one friend. Right — like I’m really going to stand over a yellow jacket nest and pour something into it! But I’ve got Plan B: two big cans of wasp spray which I’m hoping I can use from my car, with the window open just a teeny tiny bit. And if you have an idea for Plan C, I’m interested.
Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library. She lives in Commerce.
Go and get a bottle of Bayer Multi- insect killer also the Complete dust.
First get as close as possible and sprinkle the dust as a marker. At night well after dark (the dust as a marker)with a flash light go out and pour the contents of the bottle down the hole. I will tell you this will kill the nest DEAD! I have had to use this several times in the last couple of years and find it by far the easiest thing as I have now become very senistive to the little buggers. One nest I found while cuting the grass long the fence took me 3 days before I could get close enough to mark and pour or move the mower little monsters that they are. I now keep a closer eye for the nasty things, as blast they will hit and hide along fences and in mulch piles that are aging. Now I must say I haven't gone so far as sheding my clothing, but I have driven the mower through a gate without remembering how I did that with the gate almost closed, running in the house and jumping in the shower then grabing ice packs out of the freezer. The doctor told me to keep Zantac 75 or 150's along with the benadryl helps keep the reaction down from the bites.