Attack of the Killer Bees

I have a terrible fear of being stung by things. I can remember when I was a kid I was playing in our backyard under the crabapple tree and a bee landed on my face and stung me. When we were visiting some family friends in New Jersey, I dove in the ocean and was stung by a jellyfish. On my face. Again. They always go for gold.

Fast forward to a week or so ago. Brianna and I live on the second floor of our apartment, and lately as we have been walking up the steps we have noticed wasps start to swarm around us. We usually just walk past them and they fly back to wherever they come from. We leave them alone - they leave us alone.

And then it happened. We were walking up to our door, and as usual they started swarming. But this time is was different. They were aggressive - diving towards us left and right. I start yelling and sort of pushing Brianna into our apartment - because I was terrified. I might even have screamed. I don't remember because the fear that was clutching my heart overpowered all other mental processes. Then one of the little buggers stung me. On my exposed toe. Because heaven forbid they just sting me on my leg. They gotta hit you where it irritates you the most.

As I rushed into the apartment the look on my face must have been priceless, because Brianna just starts laughing at me. I'm hootin' and hollerin' like I've been stabbed or something dreadful - so I guess her laughing was warranted. But it freakin' hurt. I knew at that point that war had been declared. The only problem was that we had no ammo for fightin' em off. And to top it all off, we were heading back out in about thirty minutes. So our plan was to run and hope for the best. I decided that I would wear my deck shoes so as to give the wasps less surface area to sting. Genius - I know.

We open the door, and she goes first. I know it's the husband's job to be strong in tough situations, but I was terrified - so get over it. She gets down the steps no problem. So I go second. As I get to the bottom of the steps though, they had one lone soldier waiting for me. He got me - and guess where. The face. I hope they die after they sting you.

Anyway, I would have put something on it but that would require going back up the stairs. So obviously I just dealt with it. Brianna picked up some Raid on her shopping trip and took care of some of them, but when she was looking for where they were she found a surprise. We had 18 - yeah 18 - nests up under the railings and landing. Their own little army. The maintenance people came and took care of them the next week, but I have attached some pictures for your viewing pleasure. Needless to say, my wife thinks I'm a wimp for all this because they never even got close to her. She's probably right. But at least she got a good laugh out of it.