OMGWTFBBQ!!!

[rivka]

Alex and I were eating our breakfasts in the living room when suddenly we heard a loud, low buzzing. I looked up towards the sound and saw a wasp bumping off the light fixture. And when I say "wasp," I mean OMGWTFBBQwasp. It was a full two inches long, with a wide body. Until I got a closer look, I thought it might be a cicada somehow. That's how big it was.

I'm trying not to convey my fear of bugs to Alex, but in this case it was impossible not to react with alarm.

I led her out into the dining room and shut the dining room door. I tried to say reassuring things. Then I put on a jacket, buttoned it up to the chin, grabbed the broom, and went back into the living room to do battle.

It was still buzzing around the lights. I turned them off and went through to the playroom, which has a door to the outside. I turned on the playroom lights and opened the door wide. Then I went back to find the wasp.

It had left the now-dark light fixture and was crawling along the back of the couch. I wanted to try to steer it with the broom, but of course I was also worried that if I agitated it at all it would fly at me in a rage and sting me until I died. And the thing definitely looked too big to kill.

I dabbed gently at its back with the broom. Then I got an idea. I put the bristles in front of the wasp. It crawled onto the broom. Moving carefully, keeping the broom level, I walked swiftly to the playroom door and thrust the broom outside. When I set it on the ground, the wasp crawled off and quickly flew away.

OMGWTFBBQ. How did it get in the house?!

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

::has a heart attack and dies::

You are _so_ brave!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It might have been a queen. It's the time of year.

We had one come into our house in Lancaster when Z was a baby, about three inches long. I screamed, grabbed him and ran upstairs and into bed and under the covers while carandol bravely enticed it out into the garden. Z said "Was that a really scary wasp?" and carandol said matter of factly "No, Jo was just being silly."

Z is not afraid of wasps, though I wasn't either before I got stung.

You are so brave.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Alex was a little afraid, and at first she was disinclined to go into the living room without me. But then she started saying "Let's go look for bugs!" and "I think the wasp is hurt. I made a bandage for it." (She is currently obsessed with her prospective career in veterinary medicine.)

You are so brave.

I confess that my first reaction was to wonder if I could possibly call Michael at work and ask him to come home and get rid of it for me. Once I realized that was impossible, I really had no other option but being brave. Letting the damn thing stay in the house was SO not going to happen.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Commas are very useful. Otherwise I would be wondering about Z having been three inches long.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"How did it get in the house?!"

Maybe it was already there, and they built the house around it.

B

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

The house was built in 1842, which would give that suggestion a very apocalyptic tone... not to say that it isn't true, of course. :)

My guess is that it either came down the chimney (since the fireplace is in the living room), or got through the doors while they were open recently for toddler comings and goings, or painters going to and fro. We've also had issues with various parts of the house being open without our knowledge; the roof hatch got left open in the rush to get the house ready for us to move in, and I didn't realize it until I discovered rainwater puddles on the third floor and started searching for the source. I've tried to check everything now, but since we can only look from the inside, I'm certain there are places that we haven't been able to inspect.

I'll look into what would be required to get a tactical air-defense network set up, though. :)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

tactical air-defense network

Raid wasp and hornet killer. It has a 30 foot long tight stream and it's extremely effective.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

Given the size she was talking about, I was actually figuring we'd need a missile battery, or something like Skyguard/Nautilus/THEL. With a toddler in the house, we're probably better off with your suggestion, though. :)

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

Just don't use a lighter in conjunction, and scrub off the splashback. :)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That does seem like the only plausible way that it could fit.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, would *you* want to be the one to volunteer to tell the wasp it was being evicted? I mean, six foot tall, 250 lbs, stinger dripping with venom that leaves large, smoking holes where it lands, and carrying a baby seal in one hand, and a club in the other, just so it can demonstrate how mean it is any time someone doubts it.

*I* would have just built the house around it.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Ask the landlords if they've had any previous problems. If one got in, MORE WILL.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I would worry more about that if I thought there was the slightest possibility that there is more than one wasp of this size in the ENTIRE WORLD.

Seriously. What ecosystem could possibly support multiple wasps that are large enough to carry off a Volkswagon Beetle?

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Others might well be smaller.

But still. Wasps.

[kate_nepveu]

As an insect-phobe, I don't think that's a question I want answered!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

According to the resident Professional Naturalist, that size sounds like either a "horntail" (not a wasp at all, no stinger) or a "cicada killer." Neither is particularly hostile to humans.

The cicada killer runs about 1.5" rather than 2", but fear multiplies any foe...

[jazzfish]

Cicada-killer is what I was thinking. And let me tell you, those things are bloody /scary/, even outdoors from ten feet away.

"Not hostile to humans" is only so much good when it's trapped in a confusing environment. I'm not particularly set off by normal-sized wasps, but I'm not sure I'd have the presence of mind to be able to handle something that size. Huzzah for Dr rivka.

[ailbhe]

Goodness. Ugh. Glad that's over.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Over here, some queen wasps come in and hibernate (in lofts, chimney spaces etc) over the winter, then buzz around all confused in spring when they find themselves trapped inside.

[tea-dragon.livejournal.com]

*shudder*

You *are* very brave. I am regularly called on to remove spiders, of which we have many, but flying things? That might sting me? Yikes!!

[txobserver.livejournal.com]

Two anecdotes. When I was a nerdy kid, age 9, I brought home a fascinating wasp nest, apparently abandoned, that I found lying on the ground. Several days later, I came home from school to find my mom with a broom standing in my bedroom --- one wasp had hatched from this harmless-appearing artifact! So maybe you had a nest in your attic where the scary thing just hatched.

Second, re bravery, my elder daughter has been terrified of insects all her life. This year she is a first year kindergarten teacher. I have been so proud and amused at a couple of stories of having to oust scary bugs in a matter-of fact manner she never would have been able to achieve in the past. "But Mom, the kids would have been scared and freaked out if I did."

[cheesepuppet.livejournal.com]

This is the second incident I've read about today of KILLER WASP INVASION. The other one was in New York City.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Ice storms, hurricanes, blizzards, humidity, WASPS THE SIZE OF ALLIGATORS???

I'm staying in Earthquake Country, thankyewverymuch.

[juthwara.livejournal.com]

Eek! I think I would still be shaking after that experience. Kudos for getting it out of the house without any collateral damage.

I stopped being amazed at the ability of animals to get into a sealed house after the day that we came home and found a RABBIT in our bedroom. Quite dead, because it has the misfortune of choosing to break into a house where three cats lived. I feel like this was some sort of Beatrix Potter story gone horribly wrong.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I escort wasps outside, but have never been tested by a monster wasp like the one you describe.

The time we had a bird in the house (well, the first time), I was aided by the time of day. The poor thing was flying into a wall, then it would lie on the floor, breathing rapidly as I got up the nerve to approach it, and then fly into the next wall when I did. After a couple reps of this, I closed all the doors in the living room except the front one, turned on the porch light, and turned off the room light. It winged it right out the door. (I learned to imitate that one bird fairly well, though I seem to be losing the knack lately.)

[selki.livejournal.com]

A big scary wasp popped up in my kitchen last week. No idea how it got in. Chimney flue has been closed since December.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ewww! I hate wasps. Well done for managing to do what you did.