The Carpenters

Having spent the entire holiday weekend outside "improving" the home, I went through at least two high-volume spray cans of Spectracide. (For those of you not wasp-phobic, this is a highly-toxic chemical spray, which can spray up to 27 feet away from you. You use it to "knock out" wasps that are buzzing around, and also to destroy their nests.)

Well, this weekend I found out that wasps are annoying little milquetoasty wussies when compared to...carpenter bees.

This weekend had a twofold objective...both to finish the 6-foot privacy fence we're putting up on one side of the yard, and to finish planting veggies in the garden. Smack dab in the middle of yesterday I started getting harassed by carpenter bees, which look exactly like bumblebees except they're bigger and actually have the ability to bounce. Bob batted one over the fence with a stray picket, and it just came back pissed off.

Each one of us went out there with a new can of spray, and each one of us was amazed by these insects' powers of regeneration. They just will not die. So, of course, knowing that Menards was open till 6 today, I went online to see what could kill them. It turns out that killing them involves either A) calling a professional; B) ridding your property of all wooden structures; C) spending $290 on this wand system that will eject dessicating powder at high speed through the bees' burrows.

Then I found out that they nest in pairs, and that the male is the one who guards the nest. But, in what is undoubtedly one of God's little jests, the male that so aggressively guards the nest is born without the ability to sting. Just another thing to make me feel stupid in the middle of a home improvement project.