In fact, we did start the fire...

I am sorry to say that the Great Wasp Attack of 2011 slowed down my yard projects. It's hard to remain enthusiastic for painting fake bricks on your driveway when there is a buzzing hive of venomous wasps just waiting for you to go near it. Yesterday I sprayed an entire can of wasp killer on the nest. A few hours later I threw some rocks at the nest from the safety of my kitchen window to see if any angry wasps emerged.  I threw one basketball and three rocks at the nest. No wasps responded. I figured I was in the clear.

This morning however, I was dismayed to find that there were more wasps patrolling the nest. How could this be?!! My battle against the wasps was escalating into a full blown hornet zombie war. I sprayed another can of poison on the nest and then waited. I threw more rocks. Nothing happened. Still, I was nervous. The bag and nest needed to be removed, yet I was hesitant to try to move it because I have learned that wasps are jerks and their stings really hurt.

Luckily for me, Amy showed up. Amy has so many virtues. She is funny and kind and pretty and patient. She is also stupidly unafraid of bees, so she was more than happy to investigate the nest. How brave/stupid is Amy? She poked it with a stick!

It was a good thing that Amy did poke that nest with a stick because otherwise I would not have known that the nest was still home to a family of healthy and thriving larva. In some of the holes we could even see wasps trying to emerge. It was like wasp spontaneous regeneration! We debated how best to handle them. They needed to die and I was out of wasp killer.

I suggested we drown them in Tilex, but Amy had a better idea.

Fire!

I went searching for my lighter and Amy asked if I had lighter fluid.

We chose not to over think this fire idea. Setting the nest on fire was an extremely appealing idea to us and it seemed like the sort of idea that upon more careful consideration might seem like a Bad Idea. We turned on the hose so we could put out the towering wasp inferno if we needed to. I nixed the idea of lighter fluid because that seemed like a great way to have the fire department show up, and I really didn't want that story to be part of my blog post. Now if it had brought a hunky FBI agent into the picture...

We started the fire. The larva did not scream, so that was a disappointment. I think that Amy and I were hoping for a great bonfire of destruction, but the pile was wet so we mostly had smoke, some flame and and some nicely roasted larva. After the larva were mostly dead we squished them with our shoes. That part was very unsettling and truly disgusting.

Then we spent some time poking around the nest and leaf pile looking for any survivors who needed squishing. There were none. We were like the marines and the honey badger all rolled into one.

This will undoubtedly be the most exciting thing to happen to me all month. All I have happening now is trying to figure out who stole my bikini and Lily's bathing suit. Ideas?