Wasps.

Fuckin' wasps.

About a month ago, I noticed there was a huge wasps' nest that had formed toward the edge of my covered patio on the backyard. It was pretty big; there were white dots in the holes that I can only assume were bastard waspchild eggs.

In a panic, I did what any new homeowner would do to defend his property from unwanted pests.

I engaged in a two-prong approach: Ignoring and forgetting.

It worked marvelously, and for a while I was fooling myself into thinking the wasps weren't so bad. I would lounge out on the patio with my laptop or mow the grass and they never bothered me. They were Luxembourg, and I was going to be Belgium. You leave me alone, I leave you alone. Maybe someday we'll even share some waffles at the IHOP. Or the WaspHOP. Or whatever.

That attitude changed when I found out my home had been volunteered, Vietnam-draft-like, into being the site for a cast party for one of our shows.

Wasps. (Stinging kind)

That was great. But then I remembered the whole thing with the wasps. They might be able to peacefully coexist with me, but would they be fine with alcohol and karaoke?

My guess was no.

So, I waited until the very last minute and, the day of the night of the party, I bought some wasp spray and doused those bitches where they live. A ton of wasps flew away, and the rest just fell to the floor instantly, as if they'd just been told a really funny joke that made them collapse with glee. Only they didn't get back up.

(They live in hives, incidentally.)

Of course, the spraying wasn't all macho, Pale Rider. I sprayed from 20 feet away and then ran away like a little girl.

Well, except that a little girl would have seen that there was a second hive, almost as large as the first, that I missed.

Night of the party, somebody points out the second hive. "Didn't you kill the wasps?" they asked.

"Fuck yeah, I killed the wasps! The wasps are dead. The prophecy said one would stand and one would fall. And guess who's standing right in front of you."

"Wasps can't stand."

"Yeah, well. They're dead now, so it doesn't matter."

"Well what are those then?"

And thus was pointed out The Second Hive.

By this time, people were arriving and there was no time to go spraying toxins all over the place. So I made an executive decision not to do anything. It was nighttime. Maybe the wasps would behave.

It suddenly became the Cuban Missile Crisis. Should I tell the partygoers that there were dangerous wasps outside? What if someone was allergic?

WASP. (Non-stinging kind).

The party went on and not a single person got stung. The wasps seemed to even like the yowling karaoke. It all went without incident.

I went out the next day and sprayed the the second hive and ran away again. The neighbors were beginning to wonder who the cute little girl was running around next door.

A few days later, I noticed there were still wasps hanging around the nests, contrary to the "will kill anything in a three-mile radius, especially if it dares return to the scene of its Satanic existence" guarantees on the spray can.

That's what I get for getting the cheaper wasp spray.

I returned to my original ignoring/forgetting plan.

Until Sunday. I wasn't even thinking about the wasps. I was going to go outside and water the lawn. It's been dry here and everything is turning brown and crusty.

I walk out the back door and before I've even taken two steps, a wasp comes right at me, kamikaze-style, and stings me right on the forehead, above the left eyebrow.

Suddenly, I'm 8 years old, when I was last stung by a wasp. At that time, some friends from the neighborhood were spraying a wasp nest with water (they didn't put smart stuff in the water back then) and before I could get inside, a wasp came and stung me. I yowled and cried and my dad had to run past the wasps' nest to come get me and carry me back inside.

Fun memories.

I got stung in almost the same place. Wasps love them some Omar forehead. I did a crazy slappy dance, trying to knock the wasp away, and I yelped very loudly and ran back inside the house.

It felt exactly like I remembered getting stung by a wasp felt like. It felt like this: "OWWWW! Aw, fuck, fuck, fuck OWWW OWW OW OW OW OW! Goddamit fuck OWW! You stupid, Agggh! Get away get away, ow!"

They got me. They fucking got me.

I whined and moaned, took some ibuprofen and put ice on the emerging bump. If you're gonna go that route, with the 'profen and the ice, do it fast. I got lucky: There's almost no bump. But it still hurts badly, like a mild headache that won't go away. And in just a few hours, I've already accidentally bumped or touched the sting, making my eyes tear up.

I vowed vengeance. I was ready to kill them even before I was mad. Now, I was Tony Soprano without his morning coffee after somebody stole his bathrobe. I was gonna kill those stingbitches.

Store. Apparently, everyone in town has wasp problems like mine because all the wasp spray was sold out at my huge area supermarket. I had to run to Home Depot and get the hard stuff: an industrial one-pound can of toxic voodoo spray.

I got back home, strode purposefully to the backyard, doused all the nests (there are two small ones now, too), and ran away like I was chasing a boyfriend with my girl-cooties.

So now, I've got a throbbing pain in my head, a bunch of dead wasps on the patio (I'm afraid to go out there and see if the deed is really done) and 3/4 of a can of delicious kill juice.

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go and knock down all the nests, a task I wish I could just farm out to some little kid or a firefighter or somebody. Knock down the nests? Are these kill juice manufacturers crazy? Don't they have the technology now to build a spray that can just transport a hive into another dimension, preferably one that's composed entirely of wasp-killing fire?

This thing hurts. It's sending me messages in Morse code. It's saying, "We'll be back, human. Come back here and try to sing, "Pretty Woman," now, wuss. We'll be back."

Stupid fucking wasps.