Gitano recently   posted about  the mosquito's returning after a long winter. That reminds me that   is about the only advantage of winter & cold  weather. The lack of biting & stinging insects. It seems like the only relief we get is in winter. Lately I've seen wasp, honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees but no yellow jackets or eastern bald faced hornets yet. I  pay little attention to all but the last two. I like honey bees & tolerate all the others except yellow jackets & hornets. These two I despise.

Yellow jackets are meaner than a tomcat on Sterno. Eastern bald  faced hornets are meaner than a yellow jacket on Sterno and steroids. The yellow jacket usually nest in a hole in the ground but hornets build paper nest above ground. The yellow jacket, if disturbed will hit you & stick with you while hornets hit you, sting & back off & do it again repeatedly. They possess the ability to hit you  around the eyes with surprising accuracy too. They seem to know the most sensitive spots.

When I was a teenager I became somewhat attracted to a young girl about my age that lived down the road a couple miles from me. I wasn't the only one either. Other boys in the area had similar feelings but were afraid of her mother who was a frail looking widow & very protective off her pretty  little daughter.I too suspected she was the shotgun type. My buddy & confidant, another young woman. told me she would talk to the mother about me "seeing" her daughter. A week or so later she told me I shoould  go calling on the widow & daughter on Sunday around 1 PM.

When I arrived at the appointed time I was announced by a skinny mutt under the steps. There was no porch to the  shack. Just steps going up to the front door. The  mother greeted me & yelled at the dog & invited me in. The door had been closed & I wondered why since it was the middle of August & 90 degrees. I was surprised it was much cooler inside with windows open on the east & west sides of the room. The daughter was beautiful in a white blouse, long full skirt that came to her ankles. ALL women & girls in the early 1950's wore clothes like that. NO women dared wear slacks or pants. She had on a pair of those dratted black & white  shoes too.
The next thing that caught my eye was around a dozen blue 12 gauge shotgun shells lined up in a neat row on the widow sill that said Peters High Velocity # 6 on the side & right beside them was what looked like an Iver Johnson shotgun with a 36 inch barrel. (GULP)

The girl suggested we go outside. I  suspect she noticed I was a bit nervous. All three of us went out in front of the shack that sat back in the woods a bit from the road. We chatted a bit & the girl suggested we walk over & sit on a log at the edge of the clearing. Good idea & I  glanced at the mother & she cast a baleful stare right at me. No words were necessary. The girl & I walked to the log & her mother went  back in the  house but left the door open. The girl lifted the back of her skirt a bit & sat down on the log. I sat beside her. She was chattering like a ruptured duck but I have no idea what she said. I was likely thinking about those blue shotgun shells. I noticed she wasn't talking & looked at her. She had a strange look on her face but smiled, lifted her skirt off her thighs a bit & crossed her legs.

Instantly she jumped to her feet & let out a blood curdling scream,jumping around slapping her thighs like an Indian brave doing a war dance. Her mother appeared in the door just as quick with what looked like an Iver Johnson, Owl Head revolver in hand. I was mortified. In 3 seconds with time to spare the girl removed her skirt & half slip with yellow jackets pouring out of it. She ran into the house fast as a turkey & disappeared. I looked  down by the log where she sat & yellow jackets were fogging around a hole. It all made sense to me then. I picked up her skirt & half slip & went to the door but her mom stopped me, snatched the skirt & slip & told me to go home &  never mention to anyone  what I saw. Oddly I never got a single sting.  That was the end of a very brief romance. Just as well I suppose. I never liked black & white shoes anyway. ........Paul H

Great story!

I too despise hornets of all ilks! As you said, they're just MEAN. Period. Day or night, rain or shine. I kill 'em when I find 'em, if I can. The most common type we have around here are ground-nesters. My wife can't seem to avoid them. I don't think I've ever known anyone so prone to get stung as her. For the first few years after we moved into this house we always had several paper wasp nests on the eaves each summer. With little kids about, I killed 'em whenever I found 'em. After a few years they quit showing up here. Haven't seen a nest for several years. Good riddance! Nevertheless, I keep a can of wasp-killer handy.

Paul

I'm still laughin'.

T'wasn't funny. I might have got shot. Love & 12 gauges don't fit together very well. Bad part is, I was innocent as a baby  duck. It was something like a bad dream that affected me for months. I kept seeing those blue shotgun shells lined up on the window sill. ......I'm still amazed at how quick the girl shucked down to her panties,  white socks & those black & white shoes. I guess she did look sorta funny with yellow jackets stuck all over her legs & butt.    Jamie, the image of a yellow jackets anatomy fits the beast. Wasp killer spray works great but mostly I just use WD40. It does the job too & stops squeaks.  .......Paul H

Quote from: Paul Hoskins;154957Jamie, the image of a yellow jackets anatomy fits the beast. Wasp killer spray works great but mostly I just use WD40. It does the job too & stops squeaks.  .......Paul H

We have a pickup we don't drive much in the summer, and every year the doorjambs end up with yellow-jacket nests in them.
On a cool morning, I'll use red-label BrakeKleen (chlorinated) for that.  It works the best on them, and the residue is gone in minutes.
I just spray a little in the gap, and I don't even need to open the door.
When I do open the door, the whole nest is dead and scrapes off easily.

When we lived in Texas, seems like there were mud daubers everywhere. That said, they seemed to be the least ornery of all the wasps I have encountered.

Just kill 'em.

Every one of 'em.

Paul

When I was 12 or 13 years old I was involved in another similar difugilty with yellow jackets but I was mostly the recipient of their ire. Grandpa had mowed the alfalfa field beside the house and raked it in rows. The back side of the field was along the ditch drain from his acre fish pond & had a few briars & weeds in it. We were hauling hay to the barn on a hay sled. Usually called a "ruffening" sled. A rufffening sled is mostly the runners with a skeleton bed & considerably larger than a box sled. After the hay is around 4 feet deep on the sled it was my job to get on the sled & place what grandpa tossed on & tromp it down. I seldom wore shoes or shirt in summer & that day was no different. On the last load  it was getting late in the day & we were near the ditchline at the back of the field. Grandpa told me there was just one little bunch of hay left to load. The  hay on the  sled was around 8 feet high and 7 or 8 feet wide.

Now that huge  mule could pull a train. She stood around 18 hands at the shoulder but was slow as cold molasses. Gentle old girl & we never used lines on her. Just tell her what you wanted her to do & it was done. We did keep a halter on her & a lead strap hanging on thye hames.

When I looked at that last little bunch of hay, I thought to myself, that don't look like hay to me. Grandpa looked at it a minute, picked it up quickly with  the pitchfork & tossed it up to me. I dutifully caught it with my pitchfork & slapped it in  place & started tromping it down. Right away I started doing a war dance myself & yelling. Grandpa was busting a gut laughing. I bailed off the hay onto that mules hips & to the ground with legs that likely looked like a windmill. Today I remember  it & think about Wiley Coyote revving up to chase that skinny bird. I was moving on & heard grandpa yelling WOAH MULE. The mule let out a screech that reminded me of a steam locomotive whistle. I looked to my left & that slowpoke mule & sledload of hay passed me like I was standing still. Grandpa was running after her & yelling for me to stop her. I couldn't have caught her if I was on a Harley. She could have won the Derby pulling a sled load of hay.


You could barely get a sled loaded with hay thru that gate by going thru it at a near perfect  90 degrees but she was on a 45 degree course. TROUBLE. She barely missed a post herself but the left runner didn't. There was a loud crash with the air full of hay and sled parts but no mule in sight. I was smarting all over from yellow jacket stings & about ready to poke grandpa in the ribs with a pitchfork. We found the mule in a stall in the barn but she wasn't overly happy to see us. The hay laid in the gate for two days before we patched the sled up into usable condition. Grandma put liniment on my stings but couldn't count how many I had because so many were close together. Grandpa gave me an extra 50 cents for my days work & grandma gave him hell. .........Paul H

Just remembered this pictue of one of my uncles, my brother & a cousin in the same field hauling hay on a sled with a  horse. It's an old picture likely made with a Brownie camera in the late 1950's. .......Paul H

My biggest difugilty with yella jackets was of my own making.
When I was about 10 y/o a friend told me about the wood duck nest boxes he had helped build and place along Recreation Creek, with the help of the game dept.
They had hung them in the aspen groves that grew on the border of the Upper Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge, the year before.
Being bored in mid summer, we decided to see if any of them were being used.

This of course necessitated climbing an aspen tree or two to have a look, which is no problem for an agile 10 year-old, especially on a dare.

So when it was my turn, up I went with all the caution of a hungry chimp in a banana tree.  As I approached the last 3-4 feet below the nest box, I saw a small gray lump about the size of an orange on the bottom of the box.  Having never seen a paper-wasp nest, I wasn't understanding what I was looking at, so I persevered in my climb.  It was just about the time I was face-on with the nest box that the wasps decided to deal with the threat (me) to their nest.  

Now running from an angry nest of wasps is an instinctive reaction.  Though running while 25-30 feet up in an aspen tree, is not advised.  But too late, my fight-or-flight response had kicked in.
Down I came, assisted by gravity and throwing caution to the wind as I recklessly tried to choose handholds and footrests among the branches, as I "ran" in mid-fall.

At first the small audience standing safely on the ground thought this was wildly entertaining, thinking I had slipped but was doing okay in my recovery.
It wasn't until they recognized that I had brought a small cloud of pi**ed-off yella-jackets with me that they decided it really wasn't all that funny.

By the time I got back to the cabin my forearms resembled Popeye's and the swelling on my face made me look like I had taken a beating.
Oddly enough, it was my right ear that hurt the worst, and for the longest.
I spent at least 3 days explaining to friends and strangers alike, why I had one HUGE ear and one that was normal sized.
At least until our small lakeside community had all heard the hilarious story of how to fall 30 feet out of an aspen tree and not suffer any broken bones.

 Apparently I was better at finding handholds than I recalled, while I was doing it.
To this day I still can't recall whether or not there was a nest in that nesting box.