Welcome to another family Lore! Content warnings for Insects, drug use (medical, not illicit), aliens, alcohol mention, really poor life choices and leather.
As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy. If you want to share this story on other sites, PLEASE include a link back to the original post! Thank you, and enjoy:
A couple Octobers ago, I had to do some yard work.
One of the side effects of mom keeping a stocked bird feeder is that the sides of the driveway and entire section of front yard that touches the street have been seeded with several hundred sunflowers by the birds, who like lunch to go apparently. It’s really nice- they don’t need any more water than summer thunderstorms bring and make a pretty privacy shade between my parent’s house and the street. It’s full of birds and butterflies and local bees and is just generally awesome.
Until about October.
Once we have the first frost, the sunflowers start to die, slowly collapsing under their own weight and the lovely birds and butterflies all scarper because the yellow jackets have realized that they can chew holes in the stems of the dying sunflowers and lap up delicious sugary plant juice. Being big fans of Sugar water, the wasps then defend their sunflower stalks with the vigilance and aggression to rival a dragon on it’s hoard. My family is pretty live and let live when it comes to wildlife but ALL of us are very allergic to yellow jacket stings, so this is a bit of a problem.
Since the Yellow Jackets are very territorial and tend to just stick with their favorite snack, we theorize that if we just lop the stems off and pile them in the back corner of the yard, all the wasps will stay over there and we can use the driveway again in peace. It’s a family plan of action, but since mom was recovering from hip surgery, dad is even more allergic than most of us and my sister was in the Philippines, it was a job for Me, specifically.
The Yellow Jackets would be angry with me moving their sugar buffet, naturally. I could barely go out the get the mail as it was, God help me if I started thrashing the sunflowers. So I did some research, and came up with a plan.
Firstly, Yellow Jacket stingers aren’t that long and can be repelled with sufficiently heavy clothing, like my mom’s old motorcycle jacket, gloves and chaps. If it can repel gravel flying at you at 70 miles an hour, it can probably stop an angry wasp or twenty, right? Lacking her helmet, my choice of facial protection is a plastic respirator, reflective swim goggles and a gimp mask from the props closet.
My parents do political comedy theater. The gimp mask isn’t even in the top 10 of weird shit they have in the props closet.
Next, they’re sensitive to strong odors and most bug sprays, so I douse my idiot ass in high-grade DEET, completely failing to read the warning label about not exposing yourself to fumes for extended periods of time OR remembering that I am on bipolar medication that leaves me supremely fucked up when exposed to DEET.
Additionally, it’s widely recommended that you take benadryl beforehand if you think you’re going to be exposed to an allergen. It’s NOT recommended to take anything like benadryl at all, ever if you’ve got any kind of dopamine/serotonin problems, like the aforementioned Bipolar Disorder.
Also, the best tool for hacking hundreds of overgrown sunflowers off at the base is a Machete. That’s like, an actual fact, not me being an idiot, for once. I collect my machete, Brutus, from his usual place in the back of the Ford POS.
Finally, Yellow Jackets are exclusively Diurnal and sluggish when it’s cold out, so I’m gonna take my stoned, leather-clad, machete-wielding ass out there in the middle of the night to do this. Since my hands will be full of Machete and Sunflowers, I won’t have a free hand for a flashlight, so I take my dad’s oversize book lamp and clip it to the back of my jacket collar.
So, you know. Totally Normal sight if you happen to be up at 3 AM.
And for about the first… half hour or so it actually goes great. The DEET hasn’t leaked into the respirator yet, I’m slashing away and making good progress on the sunflowers and the wasps are sluggishly crawling over me, half-hearted buzzes of rage, but can’t find a way in through the head-to-toe leather. Most of them are distracted by the light, crawling distractedly over the lamp and occasionally across my goggles, looking as bufuddled as an arthopod can look. I’m a fucking genius.
I start to feel giddy with success. I have outwitted an entire swarm of insects! I am engaging in successful terraforming! Given that one sting could send me to the ER, I am dancing with death iteslf! It’s 3AM and nobody else is out, so I decide to start singing. I have the voice of a tone-deaf crow and I pick Bean Pháidin by Planxty to sing, probably for the tempo. My half-assed attempt at gaelic and off-key corvid voice probably sound extra hilarious through the respirator.
It is at this time that Todd comes out.
The more sensible among you were probably wondering earlier why the hell my family just didn’t ask a neighbor or hire a service to come clear them if we’re all allergic.
1. Absolutely nobody short of an exterminator will come out once the word “wasps” is said and that’s expensive.
2. My neighbors consist of:
- Mr. Drossel, the Lawyer who while a legal genius, is somewhat lacking in the physical coordination department can’t be trusted with anything sharper or larger than a spoon
- The Stoffels, who are good and competent people but were away in Uganda at the time.
- An old folks home full of Alzheimer’s patients
- Todd
Todd is in his forties and probably reasonably competent with yard tools but there is little love lost between my family and Todd- He’s trained his dog to shit in my parent’s yard so he doesn’t have to pick up after it, parks his horse trailer in the middle of the road so traffic can’t get through, throws semi-weekly house parties that have to be broken up by the cops and leave broken glass everythwere and mows his lawn at 11 PM.
Additionally, Todd is prone to the mental complications of many a mediocre man, namely that he would much rather live in a paranoid an dangerous constructed reality wherein he is the subject of many fictional persecutions because that means he’s Important rather than admit that his life is pretty ok and that he’s not doing anything that would warrant men in black suits chasing after his ass. If there’s a conspiracy theory out there that could potentially be worked into a victim complex, Todd believes it hook, line and sinker.
I am alerted to Todd’s presence by a soft, awed “Oh my god.”
I turn around to find him standing in the middle of the road wearing a t-shirt, boxers that need adjusting to hide his penis better and a single flip-flop. I can smell nothing but DEET and my own marinating flesh but it’s a fair bet he’s been into the Pabst Blue Ribbon again. We stand in silence for a moment, one of the several dozen wasps swarming on me making the best go it can at my respirator in a misguided effort to sting me inside my nostrils. I am about to speak up and assure him that I am only doing horticulture and not felonies when he interrupts.
“You’re an ALIEN.” He gapes.
I stand there for a minute. I’m nearly done, but the fumes are getting to me and I’m covered in impotently furious wasps. It’s 4 AM now and I haven’t slept in close to 30 hours. I don’t want to try to explain this to Todd.
“Sure.” I shrug, before going back to the Sunflowers. Why deny this poor man a drunken fantasy?
“I- I’m an important human.” Todd says, still wearing dirty boxers that are falling off his ass and a single flip-flop. “Lots of connections. Government connections.” I slash faster.
“Maybe you don’t speak english.” He realizes after a few more minutes of standing in the road. “You’re from like. Quasar or something.”
He drunkenly watches me for a few more minutes. Normally this would be a cause for worry but I have a machete and he has inadequate footwear so I’m feeling good about my odds. He wanders off, and I take the next load back to the far corner of the yard.
When I come back out he has a camera. Like, one of those cheap disposables that still has film. It’s 2016. I don’t even know where he GOT that thing. And he’s standing out in the road, still in his shorts and a single flip-flop. Man can locate a goddamn kodachrome but can’t find two shoes.
So I do what any chemically altered and sleep-deprived person does, and strike a pose.
Todd goes BANANAS, and starts snapping away on his crappy little camera, and we have ourselves Milkyway’s Next Top Model shoot out there in the yard. I pick up random objects and pretend to be confused by them. I stand on the roof of the car and hold a USB up at the night sky like I’m looking for a cell signal. I fucking vogue because why not.
Todd is crying with happiness. “I KNEW YOU WERE REAL.” He sobs, snapping away. “I’M GONNA BE SO FAMOUS.” He loses his flip-flop in the excitement as I climb on top of the mailbox and make a Peace sign at him.
It’s 4:30 AM and we’re out in the middle of the road and I’m doing my best Tyra Banks despite the fact that I’m 5’2” and wearing motorcycle gear that’s three sizes too big for me when the guys who deliver the paper roll up.
Jamie and Miguel stop the truck, leaning out the window and over the cab (Miguel drives, Jamie stands in the bed and tosses papers out the back because fuck OSHA) at us two morons in the headlights.
“¿Que cojones estás haciendo?” asks Miguel, entirely reasonably.
I pull the mask and goggles off and walk up to the truck. “I was doing yard work and didn’t want to get stung by wasps. I dunno what he’s on about. If you have my paper I can take it in.” I probably look like hell and am still covered in wasps, but I don’t care.
Jamie hands me my paper, I wave bye and go into the house, leaving three extremely confused men in the road.
And that’s how I made, then completely destroyed my neighbor’s night.
If you got a laugh out of this story, please consider Donating to my Tip Jar or PayPal, as telling stories on the internet is my primary source of income.
Evening re-blog to thank everyone who’s donated so far and answer questions.
When I say this is my primary source of income, I mean that due to health concerns, I can’t work a normal job, so this determines whether or not I have money for groceries. So thank you everyone, from the bottom of my heart.
to answer questions: YES, the sunflower stalks were all moved to the back yard and the wasps followed, and nobody got stung. We like having them around, in spite of the allergy, becuase they’re amazing pest-control predators and one of the few things that eats ticks.
knitting in the dark 