The Waspinator

I was trimming the grass under our cedar trees in the summer of '23 when I disturbed a big wasp nest. In 34 years at our cottage, I have been stung about five times before. They made up for it this time nailing me at least ten times around the eyes, ears, face and arms. These guys meant business as the stings left distinct bore-holes in my skin.

Abandoning the lawnmower, I ran for cover. I put on a bug jacket to retrieve the lawn mower that was still running in a cloud of wasps. They were circling the controls like a bunch of drones who had captured a piece of heavy artillery and didn't know what to do with it.

Research revealed that they were actually bald-faced hornets who attack dark colours and vibration and focus on the eyes and face. They have memories and can find you in a crowd. Only the defenders attack while the guys coming back from the field ignore you. With an appearance of a creature from an alien movie, they are doubly vicious as they can both sting and bite. Their smooth stingers allow them to sting more than once.

Generally, their nests are in bushy trees about six feet off the ground. The best time to deal with them is after dusk and before dawn when they are slowed down.

The best treatment for stings is ice.

Cousins or not, they were no match for the Waspinator. I did not react badly to the stings at the time, but knowing that my wife and her sister would end up in emergency if they got stung, they had to go. (The wasps I mean). We were also expecting neighbours for the weekend who were roughing it for the first time. Anyone driving down the lane would park beside the nest while opening the gate.

I hated to exterminate them as they are good pollinators and eat pesty garden worms, but we get a lot of foot traffic on Sleepy Hollow Lane and they were a hazard. They were also about eight feet from a big crab apple tree that we harvest in the fall for jelly.

It is now safe to walk down Sleepy Hollow Lane.

I don’t know if it was related, but two weeks later I woke up totally dizzy and feeling nauseous. I made it to a chair in the living room but needed assistance to get back to bed. I have not been sick to my stomach since I had some bad Budweiser in Drumheller in 1981 so I knew something was up. After my heart attack in 2015, heeding a lecture from the emergency room nurses for driving me to the hospital, my wife called 911. Two very efficient paramedics checked me out thoroughly and eliminated a heart issue with a portable ECG. My temperature was 102 and with the dizziness and nausea they figured it was virus-related and told me to stay in bed for three days and drink lots of fluids. I did just that, sleeping 15 or more hours a day and got over it in three days as promised. That being said, I wonder if the ten hornet stings two weeks earlier had affected my immune reaction and allowed the virus to take hold. Or maybe it was wading in the swamp in my daily fight with the beavers to clear out the culvert up the road.

This is a good website for information on the bald-faced hornet.