You Better Watch Out, Santa

I’ll say this for them: they are rather polite as yellow jackets go. Not like the seething ones I discovered while cleaning out the gutters last summer that taught me I can do an awesome jump from really high up a ladder, sort of like a stunt person. If the stunt person were a middle-aged Scooby Doo. This was just after I’d discovered that my hornet spray does not, in fact, shoot 20 feet like the label says, but instead sends out a dribble that goes “pffst,” and extends maybe five feet, tops. The stuff they should warn you not to spray willy-nilly directly over your head during rapid descent from a ladder.

Though my hair has remained yellow jacket free, my house has not. They started appearing whenever it was cold out, these drugged, sluggish insects congregating on the inside of the patio door. I have transplanted virtually dozens of them to the other side of that door thanks to my expert catch-and-release weapons that include an empty plastic sorbet container and an ad for bargain denture replacement.

I’d originally assumed the yellow jackets had made a nest somewhere within the passionflowers that frame the back door in the warmer months, and somehow they were squeezing in behind the screen. But after the vines died back, I was surprised to find not even a small hive.

It wasn’t until the door remained shut that it became clear what this Christmas season had brought down my chimney.

So this year, I have rediscovered my fireplace. No question there is more than one kind of comfort in a nice, cozy fire! Sorry, critters, but this Christmas Eve, I need to be sure not a creature is stirring…up a hornet’s nest.

Wishing you a calm, peaceful Christmas. The cootie-free kind.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

~”Twas the Night Before Christmas,” by Clement Clarke Moore