Author: Dale

When I was working at a service station with a friend one fine summer day, I saw a bee fly into our little building. It was slow day and no one really seemed to need oil changes or gasoline and as you know by now, I have always enjoyed taking the life of insects. I decided to annihilate this bee to stave off the boredom. He flew behind the blinds in the window and I smashed the blinds into him.

With the satisfaction of a job well done still hanging over me, I had a quick thought of a news report that I had seen the day before. They said that killer bees had been found migrating through the area. I also recalled that the bee I had just disposed of did not look like the usual bee. I went back over to the window to find that I hadn’t even fully killed the bee it was shaking and buzzing a little still. The way he was moving brought to my mind some sort of bee Morse Code. I crushed him again and made sure he had gone to the after life.

As soon as I was sure he was dead I told my friend to close the front door and I closed the door that led to the garage. I stuffed our oil rags under the doors to block the gaps and while I was doing that I saw other bees begin to fly around our station. My friend and I both got excited at the prospect of seeing a real swarm of killer bees and we were really excited to not get killed by one. We armed ourselves with a can of hornet spray and watched bees climb all over the windows. We sprayed a few of the bees that figured out that the door to the garage had more gaps at the top of the door.

I wish we could say that the windows were blacked out by bees, because that is the mental image I had when I pictured a swarm of angry killer bees. In reality it was somewhat unimpressive and only a few hundred bees seemed to care that I had crushed their friend. Twenty minutes later the bees were all gone and we still hadn’t seen a customer. I like to remind myself that even though they didn’t cover the windows they were still angry killer bees.

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.

I am nerdy and do enjoy a good amount of shark week on the discovery channel. Since it is warming up outside and bees, hornets and wasps are starting to fly around again, I think it is a good time to have Wasp Week.

Growing up in Texas, I would often be in the backyard with my siblings when we would hear cicadas screaming bloody murder and we would watch as a “cicada killer” wasp would stab its victim repeatedly in mid-flight while lowering it to the ground. The screeching cicada would be helpless as the gargantuan predator had swooped in from above and grabbed hold, never to let go until it was time to eat. When the screaming stopped the enormous wasp would carry away the not so small cicada. When we would see the cicada killers we would respect their space and not mess with them at all.

One day when I had just arrived at the pool that my friends and I used to frequent, I was walking around the pool with my shirt on still. My belly suddenly felt itchy so I reached in to scratch it. When my hand began scratching I felt what seemed to be an electric shock through my entire body that started from the end of my middle finger. I quickly pulled up the bottom of my shirt and started to shake it out when I heard a deep flapping of wings that vibrated the core of my soul. I soon beheld one of the largest “cicada killer” wasps I had ever seen. It flew up towards my face then went to make a getaway. In my moment of anger over being stung I wanted revenge on this buzzing beast and I grabbed a nearby child’s pool noodle and swung at the freakish monster. When the noodle actually hit, it felt like I smacked a baseball. The cicada killer fell to the ground and I ran over and stomped it to death with my sandals. I could have swore that it was about to lift my leg up before I killed it though, it was huge. To this day I still can’t believe that I was stung by a cicada killer and didn’t get carried away afterward.