SMALL BUT DEADLY

I know I've gone on about he plethora of critters up here is southeastern Connecticut. God knows I come from Arkansas, Texas, and South Carolina, where the centipedes are a foot long and sport inch-long stingers (Texas), scorpions cling to the ceiling above your bed (the Arkansas Ozarks and Texas), fire ants abound (same as before), nearly microscopic chiggers borrow into you en masse (all three states), and backwards thinking goes hand in hand with the destruction of public schools while individual rights are taken clean away rather than eroded over years (again, all three).
But never in my life have I been subjected to such critterage as I have here.
The fisher cats and Lyme-disease carrying ticks, the blackflies that swarm in spring, the deerflies that bite (and hang on after they've been slapped), all that has been reported.
But nobody told me about Late Summer. Namely, The Plague of Late Summer.
I can deal with biting flies that leave welts and mosquitoes so small that a  window screen is nothing but a collection of holes to fly through, pardon the dangling preposition.
It's the flying wingstings I can't abide.
I'm allergic to the stings of anything yellow and black. Not honeybees or bumblebees, mind you, but paper wasps and hornets.

Ugh.

It's hurts me to just write those words.

Paper wasps and hornets.

Apparently, August is The Bigtime for these wingstings up here.

Example.

My Bonsai Buddy Eric came over last Saturday to pick me up for a hike on a nearby hill that might be good for springtime collecting of potential bonsai, so I showed him around the farm. During a tour of my wood collection, he remarked on the plethora of yellowjackets in the tractor shed, and when I saw that they were coming from a hole beneath the wood, we both beat a hasty retreat.
Ground-dwelling yellowjackets are not to be trifled with; they will attack in large numbers if you merely step near their nests, and I try to avoid those flying hordes that will kill me outright.
I saw the hole under the wood and decided I'd do something about it.
Tomorrow.

I waited until dusk, then spotlighted the hole and approached with a can of 20-foot hornet killer (it shoots twenty feet, it doesn't kill twenty-foot hornets. God Forbid). I'd had this since spring, when I figured I'd be deluged with the waspy little buggers. And though I've spotlighted the upper corners of my outbuildings' rafters every weekend, I've found nary a nest.
Anyway, I pushed the button on the can and got a large cone-shaped spray that outlined the nest entrance nicely but did nothing to kill any yellowjackets. They didn't even come out. At least I didn't see any from the comfort of my truck cab to which I had retreated quickly after squirting them.

So I went to the store and bought a can of stuff that was guaranteed to shoot a single jet. That night, at dusk, I repeated the exercise, with my open truck door nearby into which I could beat a hasty retreat. Rushing forward to the hole, I pressed the trigger.
Nothing.
I ran back out of the shed.
I noticed a red tab that said "REMOVE THIS TAB" and did so, pulling out the entire red safety device and making the can inoperable. Re-inserting the red device, I got the can to squirt once very briefly, then sallied forward again to  squirt the wingstings.
Again, nothing.
I jumped back into the driveway and screamed like Charlie Brown when Lucy takes away the football while he's trying to kick it.
"AAAAUUUUGHGHGHHH!"
I worked the red thing back into the trigger, was sure I'd got it right this time, then jumped within spitting distance of the hole once again. It hadn't occurred to me that the wasps might have already died of old age, or, more likely, that they were all expiring at laughter at my expense.
But yellowjackets and hornets HAVE no sense of humor.
Anyway, this time for sure!
Except that when I tried the trigger, the red safety device popped out completely and landed right on the hole of the nest.
I'm sure the only reason they did not come out en masse when I reached down to get it was because of their being exhausted from laughing at my feeble attempts, but I made one last try and
BINGO!!!
I soaked the nest's entry with the entire contents of the can, which emptied itself in about four seconds.

I went back the next day expecting to have regained access to my wood shed, but the goddamn things were busier than ever, and now seemed a bit perturbed.

So I've given up on the tractor shed for the moment.

But that's not the end of the story.

I told this tale to my fellow craftsmen at work, and each told me that yellowjackets are bad but not nearly as bad as white-faced hornets. These live in big paper nests and are more aggressive than any others. They also have a more severe sting. I now keep my epi-pen at the ready in the front seat of the truck.

While changing the sugar water in the hummingbird feeders the next day (no, the hornets and yellowjackets do not go to the feeders, but bumblebees do, and I never kill bees of any kind), I noticed a bulbous growth under the clamp that connects my household electrical line to the Big Line out on the street.
"No," was all I could say.
Oh, yes.

My binoculars confirmed it. It was a small nest (about a quarter of a football in size) of....you guessed it, white-faced hornets.
"Well, at last they're twenty-five feet off the ground. They pose no threat." I took a picture of the nest.

The next afternoon, while mowing the lawn, I noticed the nest had changed. There was a new layer of paper material halfway down from the top.
Halfway down. IN ONE DAY.

"Jeez Louise," I muttered.
I decided to keep an eye on it but to leave it alone. Winter is only a few months away, and the colder months of Autumn will likely slow the nest's growth. In December, I'll do what I have to to remove it. Probably call the power company; I don't want to destroy my electrical service.

So we come to the boffo end to the story (or at least the end so far).
Last night, while having a nice quiet sane drink in my backyard, I was lap to my ShitZoo Cheerio while the other dogs wrestled in the yard.
Then my youngest, SpecklePup, began to make strange noises. She seemed to be eating something and coughing and sneezing, then pawing and crying, all at the same time. Cheerio sat up to look, then went to investigate, as did I.
By this time Speckle was pawing something in the ground while sneezing heartily, and as soon as I approached, I saw why. The damn pup had decided to eat (you knew this was coming) a white-faced hornet, and it must have gotten her pretty good. I checked her mouth, but found nothing. Then I reached for a piece of wood, and, covering the incapacitated insect, I went in the house for a pair of hemostats.
If I'm going to be scared of something, I want to see it up close.
JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRACKER!!!

It looked like it was wearing a Jason-style hockey mask! Or perhaps kabuki makeup.
Then it stuck its tongue out at me in defiance.

It wasn't quite dead. I sent it along and told it to follow the light.

The nest on the power line continues to grow.