Disrespectful Yellow Jacket makes his point

Published 8:36 am Wednesday, August 9, 2023

I’ve been the radio voice of Thomas County Central Yellow Jacket football for going on 40 years now. You would think that would have earned me some measure of respect from yellow jackets across the entirety of Thomas County.

Au contraire, mon ami.

Last Saturday I finally found a little bit of time to go work out in the yard. You know — time where it wasn’t either pouring rain or hot enough to make Satan miss the weather in Hell. With a window of tolerable conditions, I proceeded to trim up the azaleas in front of our house.

Now, if you live in Georgia and you are doing something outside, you know you are on a constant vigil to keep an eye out for anything that might bite/sting/hurt you. Could be fire ants, could be a horsefly, could be a snake (most of which will make you hurt yourself more than they could ever hurt you), could be a spider. Around here it could be a lot of things.

But any time you are working on things like shrubs or bushes, the main thing you’re looking for around here are wasps, who build their nests on the interior of said plants. and while finding one of those is bad enough, around these parts there is nothing worse than stirring up a nest of yellow jackets.

See, honeybees are actually quite passive (you can actually pet a bumblebee). Even those wasps will remain relatively patient until they feel threatened. Yellow jackets? Nope. They’re in a perpetually bad mood 24/7/365. In other words, with little to no warning they will be all over you and arrive with extreme attitude.

While trimming on the azaleas, I noticed in my peripheral vision a few flying critters coming from open air and landing under one of our window sills. Happened enough to get my curiosity up, so I got in position to see better. Sure enough, there was a hole about the size of a dime under this window sill, opening a small pathway for a bunch of yellow jackets to build a nest inside the cement block residing under it.

I headed to the store and bought a can of wasp spray — you know, the kind you can spray from 20 feet away and have no worry about those nasty critters getting to you because this stuff ‘kills on contact’. Remember that.

This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with yellow jackets. While mowing some years back, I immediately felt what felt like someone shooting me in the neck with a small caliber firearm. In no time flat, a literal cloud of yellow jackets erupted from a hole in the ground. I abandoned said lawn mower and broke all existing Olympic sprint records getting inside the house.

So having been there/done that, I approached this newly discovered nest with great caution. I positioned myself several yards away, hiding among the azaleas.

I aligned myself where I had a clear view and proceeded to fire my salvo of wasp spray. I unloaded pretty much all of the can, and the stuff did its job well. Not a single yellow jacket flew out of the now foamed-over opening. I felt a great sense of victory, and stood up to get a better look at the situation.

Suddenly, in my peripheral vision, I saw one lone rebel yellow jacket heading back to his hole in the wall. I actually said “I’m sorry little guy” out loud, whereupon this little joker got right up to it and obviously noticed something was amiss, got mad, saw me, made a bee-line turn (pun possibly intended), and like a yellow-clad laser guided missile clearly placed his cross-hairs on my forehead, and proceeded to dive-bomb-sting me basically right between the eyes.

I mentioned earlier about how I once broke Olympic sprint records getting away from a yellow jacket nest. This time I morphed into both Usain Bolt and Bruce Lee, a whirling dervish of running like my pants were on fire and at the same time a ninja, chopping, kicking, and swatting at the air in a disjointed dance of panic. I’m glad no one was around with a phone because my interpretive dance would surely be the most viral thing on the internet right now.

I’ve heard how folks spend thousands of dollars on botox and other injections to get rid of wrinkles. For those so inclined, if you’ll come by the house I’ll let a few of these little monsters sting you on the face and in no time flat every wrinkle you have will disappear. I won’t even charge you a dime. In about 30 minutes my face looked like I had visited the Kardashian’s plastic surgeon one too many times then gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson.

I wisely waited until night came (they don’t fly at night), and armed with another can of spray I dispatched anything that might’ve lived through the first assault, hopefully including my ill-tempered assailant.

After all I’ve done for yellow jackets in Thomas County over the years, I found what this one had done to me a wee bit disrespectful. So now as football season looms near, I’m happy to remind myself that being the voice of the yellow jackets thankfully does not concurrently necessitate being the face of the yellow jackets, too.