Taliban of insects stings NE Oregon

Northeast Oregon is full of WASPs. It also has a lot of stinging insects to keep the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants honest.

A visit from Luis the Dish TV Guy, decidedly not a WASP, Tuesday opened my eyes to the invasion.

Larry the Cable Guy was a no show.

If I got a dollar for every wasp on my eaves and rafters, I could retire and spend my life dedicated to valuable community service projects like teaching dogs that bicycles do not taste like bratwurst.

Luis did excellent work. He also told me of a recent incident where he was heroically bringing 250 channels to a home and got hit repeatedly by a predatory stinging insect. The wasp stung Luis once. He brushed it away. It came back and bit him twice more before Luis dramatically turned it into a wasp pancake.

All that so the customer could watch naked people on HBO.

Perhaps your home is similar, not in watching naked people, of course, but in battling wasps. The challenge comes in many forms. The wasps in question include yellowjackets, hornets, paper wasps, mud daubers, Democrats who are suddenly pro-war and Republicans who are suddenly opposed to a surge in car sales.

This summer has been bad for wasps, people and bugs. The stinging critters have taken up residence in every nook and cranny on my spacious 3/4-of-an-acre ranch. The wasps even tried to take over my garbage container, which makes rolling out the trash an adventure in pain.

Wasps scare me. I want to kill every one of them. That’s especially true since five years ago I was pulling down a clothesline from a plum tree and failed to notice a paper nest the size of my head. The wasps attacked. They stung me on my face enough that it swelled up and I began having difficulty breathing and had to be rushed to the hospital.

Such bites can be fatal. A hornet is among the most venomous of insects, and allergic reactions can occur. The anaphylactic shock is scary. A person can die if not treated immediately with an adrenaline injection.

Fortunately, I have been stung since in various places and not gone into shock. I just get pain, itching and an overwhelming desire for revenge.

The evil buggers love hanging out in heated, hollow places. Examples include the tubes holding up satellite dishes and the black metal rim of trampolines.

Jump higher, kids.

I may not be a hunter — not yet, anyway — but I do enjoy going after the Taliban of the insect world with a can of ammo.

The hotter it gets, the more agitated they become. They seem to be agitated for no reason other than I have Christian tendencies and they do not.

Spraying is not the only defense. A person can hang wasp traps, or call vacuumers who sell the wasps to a lab where the venom is made into an antidote.

Social wasps live in communes of up to several thousand individuals, like Woodstock 40 years ago except wasps wear more clothes. Queens lead the effort to increase the wasp nation’s GNP, or gross nasty product.

Wasps have their defenders. The predators feed on about every other pest insect species, some almost as nasty as wasps.

Still, I would be happy to have Vacuum Man come to my house and suck up the wasps. If that happens, Luis would be applauding the loudest.

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