I am the wimpy Orkin man

So I was bringing a bag of empty bottles out to the shed the other day (let's face it, our shed is basically used for bottle storage since neither Kathryn nor I possess any gardening skills) and I hear this buzzing noise.

I look up into the corner by the door, and there's a wasp nest there. It was only about the size of a fist - but the sort of fist that pulls out your heart and throws it into the Temple of Doom. It was then that I noticed a few wasps leering at me, so I booked it out of there.

The next day, we walked down to the HD by our house (P.S., it's very convenient having a Home Depot right next door) and bought a can of wasp killer. The can said to wait until evening, or morning, when the wasps wouldn't be active. So then I had a couple of hours to talk myself into being able to go back in the shed and man-up.

By the way - I have no idea where this irrational fear of bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets (huh?) comes from - being stung does hurt - but not all that much... although, I can imagine that being stung by a whole nest full of wasps might hurt a lot more.

Anyway, once the sun went down, I suited up. By the way, it was about a million degrees outside - but I wasn't going to chance anything... I put on a pair of sweats and a hoody - with the hood up. I had considered winter gloves, scarf and toque, but that didn't seem very manly, so I sucked it up.

Now - the problem was that the nest was in a corner just inside the door of the shed. It wasn't possible to get at it unless I was actually inside the shed. The can said to spray from a distance of 2 meters. (we bought this brand because the other choice said 3 meters!) Which meant that I had to be inside the shed, and at the back of the shed - at the mercy of the angry swarm that I'm sure would erupt in defence of their home.

So, I cleared a bit of the clutter (mostly by just shoving it) and got ready. I thought about taking the lawn mower out of the shed, to provide an easy exit - but it looked like it might rain, and there was no way I was going to spray the nest, then calmly push the mower back in the shed.

I got the can ready, in one hand, balanced my feet on the mower, and turned on my flashlight with the other hand. The nest was pretty much one of the nastiest things I've seen. All the wasps were crawling all over it - ready to pounce on me (at least in my imagination).

I took a deep breath, then let loose. I think I emptied about half the can - and it was a big can. Then I hopped out the door, slammed it shut and tore off across the lawn as fast as I could run.

Epilogue:

A few days afterwards, I went back to the shed and scraped the nest down with a shovel. I took it out to the back alley and smashed the crap out of it... by the way - the inside looked creepily worse than the outside.