* * * * *

                I, for one, welcome our new Vespoidea masters

“Those aren't wasps [1],” said the exterminator. “They're yellow jackets!”

Idiot, thought Spring [2]. Yellow jackets are wasps. “Can you do anything
about them?”

“Let me suit up,” he said. He walked out to his truck. A few minutes later he
comes back. “Sorry, we don't do yellow jackets.”

“Excuse me?”

“We don't do yellow jackets. We need to refer you to another company.”

“Another company? You don't do wasps?”

“Yellow jackets.”

“Wasps, yellow jackets, who cares? You don't exterminate them?”

“Nope. Those things are dangerous!”

So we are stuck with our Vespoidea friends until Thursday!

Thursday!

Lovely.

This was the news I got upon waking (the bit above is a reconstruction of
events that happened earlier in the day). Spring had also bought some wasp
spray, one can with a range of 15′ and one with a reach of 22′, just in case.
She also checked out our bedroom, which yesturday was being lordered over by
a pair of Paravespula vulgaris. Several minutes pass as I wait outside the
closed door.

“They don't appear to there anymore,” said Spring.

“Did you check by the closet?” Outside the building, they're swarming around
the portion of the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere that corresponds to our
closet.

“No, let me check.” Spring went back into the bedroom for several minutes,
then came out. “I was afraid to mess too much with the right side of the
closet. I could hear them.”

“That's not good,” I said.

“Buzzing around, and what sounds like some scratching from inside the wall,”
she said.

“Inside the wall?”

“Yes,” she said. “It didn't sound like wasps; more like a scratching noice,
like mice or something.”

“In the deaththrows of being stung to death, I don't doubt.” Great! They may
be inside a section of wall!

But they don't appear to be inside the room, and Spring did spray around the
areas most likely for them to crawl through. So the room should be safe.

Should.

And they don't appear to bother anyone coming or going in or out of the
Facility in the Middle of Nowhere so several much needed trips to the grocery
store ensued.

Thursday.

Inside the wall.

Can I scream now?

On the plus side, The Office is paying for this. Not us.

Update on Wednesday, January 14^th, 2004

Spring [3] presents her side of the yellow jacket story [4].

In my defense, I have such a horrible memory for dialog (so of course I
became a Drama Geek in high school), unlike some friends of mine, like
Gregory [5], who can recite whole swaths of diaglog verbatim from a film he's
only seen once while for the life of me I can't remember what was said to me
mere moments before.

Thus, the embellishments.

But then again, all you need do is read The Demonic Creature that Invaded
Bill's Room [6] to see just how wild my embellishments can get.


[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/01/12.1
[2] http://www.springdew.com/
[3] http://www.springdew.com/
[4] http://www.springdew.com/mimosa/m174.htm
[5] http://www.livejournal.com/users/corsair2/
[6] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/ml409.html

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