Ok, so if we're telling stories I have a few. Flying, stinging insects is my only irrational fear. Snakes, spiders, dark, etc. None of that bothers me. But I am completely unmanned by wasps.
I have had an ongoing battle with bald faced hornets since we bought our house. I had several 60-70 foot red spruce and white pines around the house and they just loved to build their nests in there. You would get the occasional dive bombing when going about your business, and you'd get the occasional hornet in the house that was always lots of fun. My dumbass setter loved to try to catch them in her mouth which pissed them off and they figured I was fatter and slower, so why not come sting me? I got the last laugh in March when I cut down the trees. No more hornets.
Or so I thought.
My house was built in '81, and not being in Texas, it didn't have central AC. What it did have was two "window units" permanently installed through the walls. One in the Master bedroom and one in the living room. I installed central air in the house back in 2010, but didn't really want to deal with holes in the wall at the time, so I just left the old units. We did new siding this spring, so the time had come to deal with the old AC units. The Mexicans ripped them out of the house and sided up the outside, and then it was up to me to deal with fixing the drywall where they had been. The master bedroom was uneventful, but when I ripped out the drywall around the hole to frame up and patch the living room, a gigantic hornet nest fell out of the wall into my living room. I screamed like a little girl, peed a little, and backed up. Thankfully it was an old nest, and it was icy cold outside that time of year anyway. I cleaned all the nest out of the wall and patched it up. It still gives me willies to think of the thousands of freakin hornets that were inches from me and my home.
My best story is not my finest moment. Right after we moved to WV I was mowing the yard. I kept seeing yellow jackets buzzing around one corner as I went around that part of the yard. On pass six or seven I spotted the hole. I kept mowing, plotting my attack. Somehow, I decided that the best course of action was to park the lawn mower over the hole, rationalizing that the yellow jackets would hear the commotion, fly out of the hole an into the rotating blades of death above. It was a bullet proof plan. On the next pass, I parked the mower over the hole, and stood there for several seconds, pleased with my genius plan. At that point, my legs erupted in fire as I got lit up. I ran off screaming, and suffering from a dozen or so yellowjacket stings. I had to crush one MFer who was sitting on my thigh just popping me repeatedly. I sought refuge and solace from my wife, who listened to my story, and then laughed and called me the "stupidest smart person she knows". I consoled myself, finished mowing the next day, and dumped a quart of gasoline down the hole after dark, which I promptly ignited, and "killed it with fire".
F wasps.
Also, mowing yellow jackets does not work.
