August 06, 2005

The Joys Of Home Ownership

Friday, 10 Sweltring (Wedmath, sorta) 2005

We were trying to get out early this morning to toss some weed and feed onto the lawn while the morning dew was still there. So we got the requisite pot of coffee on, and started getting the tools for the job ready.

But we were slightly sidetracked when we noticed, upon getting our bag of nitrates out of the corner of the garage, that there were a couple of insectoidal presences buzzing around. In said garage. Before I opened the frelling garage door.

Now, one of the things that have been hitherto unadvertised regarding the psyche of Your Humble Narrator is that Bugs Bug Me. A lot. Whenever we see bugs in locations that we do not expect them to be in (say, any indoor area in the house/garage inhabited by Yours Truly), our first impulse is to find out where and how they came to be in said locale, before consigning them to an inglorious demise on the soles of our shoes. We don't, generally speaking, see hordes of bugs anywhere in our homes - even though we're on constant vigil. But when we do, we have to get rid of them one way or another as quickly as possible.

Needless to say, the bugs that have toxic defense mechanisms are quite a concern for us. And these particular ones look like bumblebees on steroids - they have the bumblebee look and slightly more heft than most bumblebees we've seen, but the stingers hang down similar to the way they do on wasps and hornets when in flight. And somewhat differently than we remember your basic bumblebee (although, praise Koresh - it's been a while). So these particular flying poison sacs where of somewhat, um, extreme concern. We grabbed our can of bug spray and doused the little buggers a couple of times. We're not really sure what insectoid giggling sounds like, but we think we heard a bit of it before we could get the door open and watch them fly out. To our shock, they flew into a small hole in the concrete steps leading to our front porch. Where they merged into a relatively steady stream of their fellows.

To cut a long story short: we're going to have some professional help with our troubles early next week - now that we've finished waiting all day for them to call us back. And hopefully the adrenaline shock of dealing with poisonous flying insects in close confined quarters will wash out of our system soon...

Posted by (: Tom :) at August 6, 2005 08:07 PM