October 16, 2006
"That's the one that got me."
Posted by pete at October 16, 2006 7:34 PMOr rather, the one that got The Wife.
She was cleaning the ubiquitous pine needles out of the hedge on the side of our house when she came in to inform me she'd been stung on the arm by a hornet. After securing my faithful can of Spectracide (and, uh, donning a long-sleeved shirt), I poked around in the hedge until I found the offending lair. Not a hornets' nest, but rather the domicile of some paper wasps. One good dousing (and a few minutes to let the bastards die) later, and I snapped a photo.
Texas is home to all manner of biting, stinging, and generally ornery fauna. We regularly deal with fire ants, mud daubers, paper wasps, and yellowjackets, to say nothing of bats, wild dogs, possum (that's Opossum to you), and arboreal rats.
I'm quite proud of the missus for bearing up as well as she did (I don't think the sting bothered her longer than a few minutes), considering the paper wasp ranks a healthy 3.0 on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.
This reminds me of Dr. Angelo's rule for a happy marriage. "Kill any insect she points at."
Amusingly, that rule has an exception for flying stinging insects, like wasps. Which I hate. With a passion. Liz generally takes care of such when they appear in our house, which is far too often. Remind me to tell the tale of the day I stayed home sick and found 7 wasps inside the house. Oh, it is a laugh riot, especially the part when I found # 7 crawling on my leg. Good times...
Texas also has something called Cicada Killer wasps, which are the Biggest Fucking Wasps I have ever seen...about the length of a human index finger. Scary looking motherfuckers. I hear they are not aggressive, but who the hell wants to find out? They look like their sting would rate a 12 on that 1-4 scale. Yeef!
To all you whining texas insectophobes: C'mon, show a little backbone, will ya?
I am so going to email this to my husband. You defended your beautiful wife by killing horrible stinging icky flying insects of death. MY husband is complaining because (I shit you not) a frog jumped onto my laptop screen IN MY LIVING ROOM and I made him get out of bed to evict it. I'm telling you though I swear it was one of those poison dart frogs. I SWEAR.
I was never aware such a pain index existed for stings! She is tough, indeed. I remember beholding a mud dauber's nest with terror the first time I saw one at summer camp. Those are the ones that hunt and kill spiders, then store them in those mud pipe lairs right?