Wasp Week pt. 2: Hornet Battle

I was out mowing the lawn one fine Saturday morning when I started mowing near a fence post for the chain link fence around the backyard. I had noticed a few hornets flying around the yard earlier and I know there were quite a few nests hanging off the side of the house. As I got the mower very close to the post I suddenly felt a stinging sensation, right on my left forearm. I smacked at the culprit with my bare hand and when he hit the ground I used all my fury to crush the life out of him on the lawn. Just when I had destroyed him I felt another sting further up my left arm I reached back and grabbed the new stinger and threw him onto the driveway where I stepped on him. I really hate being stung and it just makes me downright angry. I was in this state of rage when 4 or 5 other hornets swooped by my head. I said, “That’s it” and I went inside to get a bottle of bug spray. I came back out and saw that there were what looked like 30 or so hornets swarming around the lawnmower. Normally I would say, “Forget that” and head back inside until they left, but I was still fuming mad from the previous 2 stings. I had vengeance on the perpetrators but now I wanted to kill their whole family. I went over to the mower and sprayed three of them off of the handle. To my delight the bug spray worked fairly quickly. One of them shot straight for my head when I sprayed him out of midair. More of them tried the same trick and met the same fate. I would also swing at them with my hand and knock them to the ground where I would kill them. I was en fuego, I could not miss, I do admit that I must have looked like a madman to any neighbors that may have been watching, but in my hood it might be a bonus to appear unstable to your neighbors. I had cleared away almost all of them when I noticed some more of them coming out of the fence post. “Ahaaa!!”, I thought, “I have found the nest.” I must have angered them earlier by vibrating the nest with the mower. They didn’t have to come out and sting me, I am a rational guy they could have just asked me to steer clear of the post. But no, they took it right to the physical confrontation level. Well now they would all pay with their lives. I walked over to the fence post, smacking hornets out of the air as I made my way. When I got to the post I immediately started spraying down the hole in the top. Hornets were scrambling towards the top and when they got there they would drop dead. The hornets trapped underneath them would keep climbing and would push their bodies over the edge of the top of the post. It was really cool looking. When the dead ones dropped over the edge the lower hornets would get hit by the spray and die. Oh sweet, lopsided, over-reactive justice.