You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

WASPS UNDER THE SWINGSET

Maura and I had a young family with three small children. We lived in a suburban ranch house in Portland, Oregon. One of the features we liked when we bought this house was the enclosed backyard with a sturdy swing set. It was a place for our children to play outside, away from the busy streets. In the summer of 1978, I noticed that a colony of ground-nesting yellow jackets had located their nest between the legs of the children’s swing set. Anyone who has had the misfortune of walking near a nest of these yellow wasps can attest to the fact that they deliver a painful sting to those who come too close. The threat to the children was such that we could no longer let the kids play in the backyard.

Our next-door neighbor asked why the children were not playing outside. I told her about the yellow jacket nest and explained that I had not yet figured out how to get rid of it. She confidently told me, “The sure-fire way to get rid of yellow jackets is to hang an open can of poison bait near their nest.” She said to put a small ball of uncooked hamburger mixed with insecticide in an open can where pets can’t get it. Yellow jackets can’t resist hamburger. They will take it back to their nest to feed their queen and larvae. In a week, there will be no more hornets.” She said. I told Maura about my intention to rid the yard of wasps.

I bought hamburger, and the insecticide my neighbor recommended. I did as she had instructed and wired the can in the swing set, high out of reach of the children and pets. Over the following week, when near the swing set, I would pause to watch in hopes of seeing hungry hornets swarming in and out of the bait can. I never saw one hornet go to the can of rotting meat, but it killed a lot of flies. After two weeks, I took the can down and flushed the stinking bait.

I described my dilemma to a colleague in the office. He advised me to pour boiling water down the nest entry. “You have to do it at night when all the wasps are in their nest. By the way,” he added, “gasoline works even better.” Cooking the wasps with boiling water seemed to me like it would work. I told Maura about the method I was going to use to eradicate the nest. She rolled her eyes as if to say, “Sure.”

I prepared a steel vacuum cleaner tube with a small piece of window screen cut to fit tightly inside the tube. The intent of the screen was to thwart any wasps that would attempt to fly up the tube and into my face. My plan was to press one end of the tube down against the nest entry hole while pouring the scalding water into a funnel from the other end of the tube. It was a warm night when I put the plan into action. I set a large saucepan of water on the stove to boil. Wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt with thick gloves to protect my hands from the hot tube and boiling water. I didn’t think about my feet and carelessly wore flip-flops. I cautiously approached the nest. I thrust the tube into the entry and began pouring. It was a very large saucepan, and the pouring took a long time. I was focused on watching to see if any wasps had escaped around the tube, so I didn’t immediately notice that my feet were becoming very hot. I was standing in a depression next to the hole. The boiling water was not all going into the hole. Much of it flowed into the depression in which I was standing. With burning feet, I dropped the tube in order to escape a swarm of very hot’n-bothered wasps, and ran to the safety of the house. There, I was greeted with a derisive look from my wife. The following day, the yellow jackets were agitated and seemed to be more numerous than ever. The hot water bath was the second bit of advice, which didn’t work. I had to find another method to exterminate these dangerous wasps.

Plan C: After having made a big deal about how I was going to wipe out our backyard threat, and twice failing, I chose not to inform Maura of my third effort to avoid further ridicule should this attempt also fail. I put the gear I would need in the garage. After dark, when my absence from the house would not be noticed, I went to the garage and put on my ski hood, one that covers my head except for my eyes. I didn’t have a bee bonnet. I put on a long-sleeved jacket, and I tied the legs of my pants so that wasps could not fly up them. I was taking no chances. Using the same steel vacuum cleaner tube, the one with wire mesh in it, the funnel, and a quart of gasoline, I headed to the back yard. Once there, I realized that I had forgotten the matches. My colleague had not suggested that I set the nest alight, but I thought it would be a good additional measure. I didn’t want the further humiliation should this attempt also fail, so I went to the back door to our living room to get matches off the mantle over the fireplace without Maura being aware. The door was locked. I had to knock. Maura came to the door. She screamed in horror when she saw a hooded man in a big coat on a hot August night, in pants with rope around the cuffs, holding a steel pipe in one hand, gasoline in the other, and wanting her to open the door. It took a while to calm her down, and then even longer to get her to stop laughing, so I could ask her to find me a box of matches.

After obtaining a box of matches, I went to the swing set to proceed with my plan to pour gasoline down the nest entry. When the gas can was empty, I dropped the pipe and stepped away. Wasps began to emerge from the nest as I struck a match and tossed it at the nest entry. The resulting blowtorch eruption set them alight. They were covered in gasoline. The consequence was a geyser of flame and burning wasps. It was a spectacular fireworks display in celebration of the final and successful eradication of the swing set wasp’s nest.