As seemed to be universally the case in my memory, as a kid I just couldn't leave a wasp's nest alone. Few things seemed to excite as much focused energy as trying to put an end to such a threat. Over time we graduated from crude rocks and sticks to shotgun blasts, rags soaked with kerosene and held at a precarious distance with the longest pole we were able to procure and so on. Thus directed, we leaned our creative bent. Our creativity eventually reached its high water mark with the launching of bottle rockets into the heart of the hive, directed with lengths of pipe and a welding glove over the end of it to protect our hands from the gleefully anticipated ignition. To our peril, our escape was complicated by the difficulty of trying to run while laughing our heads off and looking backwards...no simple achievement and one rewarded with mixed results.
As a married and responsible homeowner in a small town, such tactics had to take on a less spectacular yet equally effective venue. A couple of years ago I had the fun of summer painting in a second story eave on a 28 foot ladder. With paint can in one hand and brush in the other, my face tilted awkwardly against the angled under surface of the soffit I was dismayed to discover numerous yellow jackets entering and exiting a small hole above a decorative knee brace and into the wall directly in front of my face. Dropping the brush and hastily descending the ladder I needed a few minutes to calm down. Of course I tried hanging a wasp trap and sprays with limited success but the angle of the hole prevented me from really shooting the spray into it. Time was going by and the paint job schedule was beginning to slip at an alarming rate. What to do? I hit upon the idea of wiring up the nozzle of my wife's vacuum cleaner through the sash window and inches from the hole. My wife wasn't too supportive of the scheme but turning it on for half and hour each day for a week and a half necessitated only a couple of removals and reinstallations--well worth the risk/reward ratio of watching countless yellow jackets approach the entrance only to be pulled off course and vanishing as if into a black hole.
Sometimes the man is richest whose pleasures are the simplest.
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Today's Featured Article - Earthmaster Project Progress Just a little update on my Earthmaster......it's back from the dead! I pulled the head, and soaked the stuck valves with mystery oil overnight, re-installed the head, and bingo, the compression returned. But alas, my carb foiled me again, it would fire a second then flood out. After numerous dead ends for a replacement carb, I went to work fixing mine.I soldered new floats on the float arm, they came from an old motorcycle carb, replaced the packing on the throttle shaft with o-rings, cut new ga
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