Crawling Wasps

This entry comes under the category of "Living in and trying to tame the desert."

I do not like wasps. Rod is highly allergic to wasps. We get lots and lots of them in the spring and through the summer so this year I hung three wasp traps. They're attracted by the smell and fly into this contraption which they can't get out of. By now, there must be 300 little wasp corpses hanging in the bright yellow containers in my yard. Sometimes I watch them fly around and around, but then I actually feel sad they can't get out and they're going to die. This sadness doesn't last long, don't worry. I thought the traps would take care of all of them until, one day, I walked into my study in my bare feet and there was a wasp on the floor. He wasn't flying, he was barely moving, but he was alive on the floor. In quick fashion I dispatched him down the toilet. Then, the next day I came into the room and there was another one - in the exact same place. This happened over and over. I tore the room apart looking for a nest and nothing came up. I had the exterior of the house sprayed and still these half-drugged wasps kept showing up in the exact same place. Tahoe, our black lab, started licking the spot to the point of separating the carpet fibers. Down, Tahoe, down. Then, we went on a two week vacation. When we returned I checked the room - no wasps. Ah, they must have given up. Then, I turned on the air conditioning because the house was frying after two weeks of big heat. Twenty minutes later I went back in the room and there was another half-dead wasp! It was an ah-ha moment -- the wasps were coming through the air conditioner. By the time they were sucked through the system and blown out through the vent they were practically dead. And, they always landed in the same place. Whew - what a ride that must have been. The next day Rod flushed the A/C with water and lots of nests came floating out of it. I think these particular wasps knew the pretty yellow containers wafting in the wind were bad news for them. They thought themselves pretty smart to hide and build nests in the A/C unit. They are cagey little pests, but we'll be ready for this trick next year. And this is one of those moments I have to ask, "Now, why exactly did Brigham Young think this was a good place to settle?"