Who pays much attention to a small hole in the ground?
Especially when you have stupid colonies of moles burrowing under your front
yard or visiting armadillos that love to dig small holes foraging for food
after dark and get all your dogs going because they can see them.
Obviously, we
don’t pay a great deal of attention to them.
My husband decided the grass needed mowing after a week
of rain. Yeah, the grass was definitely growing tall even though it had been
cut two weeks before. We usually mow the grass about every week when we get a
lot of rain and every other week when it’s drier. We don’t use a push mower
because our yard takes up almost an acre. We have a riding mower. Love my John
Deere.
Since I had to work most of this weekend Dan decided to
do the mowing Sunday afternoon and told me to go take a nap. Perfect suggestion
to me, thanks honey. When I’m tired I tend to nap about an hour and a half and
I sleep pretty deep and I was very tired. I fell asleep to the sounds of the
mower and the smell of cut grass.
An hour later I’m suddenly awakened by screams. To be
precise my husband’s screams of pain. That’s a heart-thumping guarantee
to awaken anyone. One moment you’re asleep and the next you’re hyper alert and
ready for battle. Having the Danes go off with serious barking didn't help. By
the time I get out of the bed room Dan had made it to the north side of the
house, still screaming, and around to back. I look out the window and the mower
is abandoned but upright. My mind has a couple of seconds to figure out the
probable cause of the ruckus. Bees. Well, to be specific, yellow jackets.
Sure enough, he has a small cloud of them flying behind
him. I had no idea if he hit a ground nest or there was a nest in branches of the lilac bushes that go across the front of the yard. Dan made it to the
back door and dashed in. Yellow Jackets pinged against the glass door.
I had
already gotten down the antihistamines and starting a bowl of baking powder
paste. He’s not allergic to bee stings but I would rather err on the side of
caution and I didn't know how many stings he actually had. Fortunately Dan had
on heavy denim knee length shorts and a thick work shirt with a double thick
yoke across the back of his shoulders and a good-sized collar. The Yellow
Jackets couldn't really penetrate the material well enough to do any real
damage and the collar mostly protected the back of his neck and shoulders. He
always wears a hat (and glasses) so his face and eyes were safe. There were a
few of the nasty things tangled in the thick hair near the back of his neck. We
had to get those out. He had several stings on that part of his scalp. Tore the
heck out of his lower arm and got him pretty good on one calf and knee. Maybe
four or five bites. Most had been on his shoulders where, thankfully, he was
protected.
It was a ground nest. Now keep in mind we mow frequently.
No attacks two weeks ago when he mowed the same area and in the same way. So
either it’s a new nest or more likely, the nest had been there but not on the
area we mow but had grown toward the yard since the last time we mowed and with
a new entry way there.
Dan’s cussing a blue moon and threatening fire (he’s a
secret pyromaniac) and destruction once the sentries went to ground. I’m having
a vision of a major fire in the front yard with Dan chanting, burn baby burn.
Um, no, sweetheart, no gas and no fire.
We need to see where the entries
are and we can use hot mint soapy water—like we have on a few nests in the
past. It works fine and mint oil is very effective in killing bugs or wasps.
Then he remembered he had two cans of wasp/bee stream shooters. So he did that
followed up with water. Hopefully it worked. I don’t like pesticides because of
the animals and if they were to walk in it… and I’m highly allergic to them.
A few years back we had a huge ground nest in the far
back corner of the yard. It had several entryways. We figured it was at least
four foot wide underground. All I know is it took a long time for the fire to
burn out. It’s not good for the ground but Dan had waited until I went
somewhere, to grocery store I think, to do the deed. I’d have pitched a fit had
I been there.
So the moral of this story is to pay attention to holes
in the ground and scope them out to see if there is wasp activity. If there is
proceed with caution especially when mowing in the spring or fall. Yellow
Jackets are very aggressive in the fall as food becomes less plentiful.
Dan was fortunate because it could have been oh, so much
more serious. If he hadn't quickly recognized what was happening and high
tailed it out of the area he could have had hundreds of stings instead
of fifteen or twenty of them and be spending the night in the hospital instead
of snoozing in his recliner.
