Buzz Kill

I’ve become fluent in finding the silver lining in less-than-stellar scenarios during my completely mature and not at all over-the-hill years. Like when I went hog wild with those damn introductory 0% interest credit cards in college. Charging everything from TVs to 2 am deliveries of cookies the size and shape of pizzas (RIP to Veronica's Secret in Bridgewater, MA), it’s no surprise I ended up $25K in the hole before I could rent a car. It took 6 long years and the help of a debt management program to dig myself out of that youthful blunder. I did get a killer credit score out of it. Still, the real lesson was how compound interest is a surprise bitch, and every purchase adds up when you swipe with abandon. I haven’t carried a credit card balance since that fiasco.

There was a time I got lash extensions and immediately hated them, so I went full spaz ripping them out myself. That left my eyes bald for months, but hey - at least now I know some things just aren’t meant to be DIY! As a bonus, I became skilled at applying temporary strip lashes, a talent I still possess to this day. It’s the little things…. right?

And I couldn’t forget when I traded my paid-off ride for a “cool” Volkswagen that spent more time in the shop than on the road. It also came with a less-than-cool car payment and increased auto insurance. I learned not to ditch older reliables for shiny new lemons with that hot mess. The side lesson is that Volkswagen's are craptastic, always break, and cost a fortune to fix. Seriously, WHY do you have to replace the entire headlight and not just the bulb? It's highway robbery, I tell ya!

There’ve been countless other adulting misadventures involving counteroffer acceptance regrets, misplaced trust in colleagues with nefarious and self-serving intentions, and adventures in the politics of parenting, which continue to surprise and infuriate me the older my children get. Some of these epiphanies smacked me upside the head harder than others, but if I squint hard enough, I can find a scrap of enlightenment in even my worst experiences.

But all this lesson-learning clarity flew out the window when an enemy of epic proportions infiltrated our happy existence. Relentless and resilient, this foe took over our lives during the most beautiful time of year, the summer. Yet we did not lay down and accept this fate. Instead, we persisted in plotting a downfall with a vengeance so intense that it bordered on sociopathic. In fact, to any outsider, our summer conversations would sound like a pair of serial killers discussing our murderous methods. Take, for example, this conversation from the Summer of 2023:

“Death toll is up to 97. There are so many, Jess. It’s like we did nothing last year.” The August heat was its usual oppressive self. I recall Jeff’s update being delivered between gulps of water and heat-exhausted pants. He had been outside in this misery doing what I joke as being “the Lord’s work,” so I bit my tongue when I spied the sneakers on his feet. 

“Yeah, but isn’t it therapeutic stomping them to death?” I quipped halfheartedly, turning my eyes away from the wanderings of dirty soles across the kitchen floor. Damnit! He knows I hate outdoor footwear worn inside, though that battle paled next to the war he was fighting for our entire family. I let the shoe situation slide, considering this is what it had come to - STOMPING. 

Perhaps I should provide context before someone alerts the authorities and we’re slapped with a search warrant. Although, the excavation of our yard might actually solve this problem. ::Please standby while I add that to my "Outside the Box" ideas list in my journal::

Without further ado, let's get down to the introductions. I present our nemesis, the demon spawn known as ground digger wasps. Legend has it they were birthed from the fiery pits of hell sometime in the Colonial Era when Satan was going through a “murderous giant insect” phase. Shit. He couldn’t have just gotten a lower back tattoo and waited out this edgy stage like I did after a breakup? Alas, I suppose we can’t expect such rational thinking from the literal embodiment of evil and eternal torment.

Anyway, I strongly advise against googling these dirt demons. They are the things nightmares are composed of. You googled them, didn't you? Well, don't say I didn't warn you when those images are flashing before your eyes at 3 am. Let this be a lesson: some things can't be unseen. For those of you who followed my recommendation, I’ll provide a description that is vivid but not overboard and should still allow you to sleep peacefully tonight. Unless you're a raging insomniac by nature like me. In that case, I'm sorry.

Picture a yellow jacket hornet. You know, those really angry assholes that invite themselves to your cookout? They’re the ones that get pissed off and sting no matter how gently you shoo them away, so you have to go full metal jacket on them or risk succumbing to their wrath. Now envision one of those hotheads swollen to triple size. Yes, TRIPLE size. We're talking about a gigantic yellow jacket doppelganger. The difference is that when you swat this massive menace, instead of attacking, it simply flies off...only to blithely return minutes later, forgetting that its presence is unwanted. A true idiot through and through, or so I thought.

Bursting onto the scene each July like a plague of hummingbird-sized dive bombers, ground digger wasps exist for one purpose only: to hunt cicadas. In pursuing their prey, they spend their days tormenting human beings with their bullshit and manage to leave a wake of destruction in their eight-week existence. These winged-whack-jobs fly in chaotic, zig-zagging patterns just above the ground, like a squadron of drunken crop dusters making reckless passes over a field. Then, one by one, they repeatedly plunge headfirst into the soil to dig their torture chambers. Each ground assault creates a heap of displaced dirt resembling a tiny volcano. Eventually, our yard resembles the pockmarked landscape of the moon’s acne-prone teen years. Not that our grass was ever lush enough to feature on the cover of Luxury Lawns magazine, but these rampages leave behind a war-torn terrain of dirt mounds. It’s like an alien invasion happened, and the aliens were all about abducting blades of grass while leaving the roots behind out of spite.

But the real horror show is what happens in these underground lairs. After the female digger paralyzes an unsuspecting cicada with repeated stings, she drags the immobilized invertebrate to her pre-dug dirt dungeon of doom. While the cicada lies there, alive but unable to move, she lays an egg under its legs as a surprise gift from hell. Soon, the egg hatches, and the ravenous offspring feeds off the captor. Once satiated, the mini hellbeast spins itself into a cocoon of sorts where it hangs out and develops (or pupates for you entomologists out there) into a brand new aerial asshole who will emerge the following July to repeat the cycle of misery. What a charming birth story I just described! Want me to write yours? Doesn't it give you the Wish version of Ridley Scott/Quentin Tarantino vibes? And so, the cycle of summertime trauma continues. Now excuse me while I go vomit...

Okay, I’m back.

Stay with me here because I like to give credit where credit is due, and these insects possess one quality that garners a shred of respect: the females RUN THE SHOW. After mating, the males stand guard around the nests but lack... the anatomy... to sting. They’re like guard dogs without teeth stuck in an act of performative defense. Adding insult to injury, the female wasps somehow know the gender of the offspring before each egg is laid. ::shudder:: She uses this alien-esque knowledge to designate meager rations of just one cicada to the males since they are smaller and expend much less energy than their lady counterparts. Mama wasps provide female offspring with 2 to 3 cicadas to ensure they are sufficiently nourished to begin their future reign of terror. How emasculating it must be to be a male wasp - given just enough food to start a meager existence and ensure you don’t get too big, used for your body, then tossed aside to complete a pointless and menial task while being pitted against others of your same gender in a fruitless competition. Why does this sound so familiar? In any case, this probably explains why they end up just flying around fighting with each other in some kind of airborne dick-measuring contest. Was that too much? Well, jokes about "stinger size" don't track since the males don't have stingers. Don’t come for me; I’m merely stating facts here.

Getting back to our situation, Jeff and I have tried everything to rid our lives of these menaces. However, our first attempt from way back in 2019 deserves particular mention, for it was a melodramatic affair worthy of the most exaggerated prose, so here goes.

It was a muggy July evening. The bright red lawn flags I placed earlier in the day stood beside each dirt heap, unstirred in the windless night. As our flashlights roamed the grass, the shadows they threw writhed to life, twisting and contorting like tortured souls in hell’s hot flames. Our lawn became a mass of shadowy undulating shapes dancing in the moving glow as we snuck between the mounds, feeling like damned visitors to the underworld. 

Are you hooked? Great, let's continue...

But the reality was this was our land. We paid the overly-inflated taxes for this meager 1.11-acre property and were ready to take it back. Armed with our weapons of choice, a funnel, one gallon of ammonia, a measuring cup, and a stack of clear glass bowls to watch the retribution unfold, we were confident we would win this war. 

“Do you think the neighbors can see us out here?” I asked, stifling a self-conscious laugh.

“Who cares?” Jeff was focused intently on pouring precisely one cup of the neon yellow liquid.

“Ready?”

He nodded, but my concern persisted, so naturally, I doubled down or “nagged,” as many husbands would lovingly refer to it.

“Okay, because you have to be ready to pour as soon as this funnel goes in. I don’t want to…” I trailed off as an involuntary spasm of revulsion coursed through me, causing a momentary pause in my nagging requests for assurance. “Ugh. I don’t want to risk one escaping in the middle of this.”

“Yes, Jessica, I know!” He exclaimed, using my full first name in the deliberate way he does when annoyed or teasing. Typically, I can discern which of these vastly different usages is his intention. But at this moment, I was unsure if the emphasis stemmed from irritation, hidden anxiety, or his propensity for dramatically feigning aggravation to get a rise out of me. I didn’t care. The mission was far too critical to be distracted by silly linguistic idiosyncrasies.

I bent down quickly, gagging genuinely but theatrically as the dirt crunched beneath the funnel’s pressure. Ever the professional, Jeff executed his role perfectly and sent the swirling torrent of highlighter-colored liquid down the tube. The moment it vanished into the underground abyss, I snatched away the funnel and covered the hole with a glass bowl.

Seconds later, the enemy emerged from its tunnel just as we had hoped. We shouted victoriously, trading a celebratory high-five before shining our flashlights to watch the demonic degenerate suffer.

Except it wasn’t suffering.

The 2” wasp walked in circles around the glass, confused and irritated but seemingly unharmed by the 8 ounces of pungent, caustic chemical we had just poured into its nest. This wasn’t the slow, satisfyingly torturous death I was hoping to witness. Trust me, I didn’t cease my nagging hide my disappointment.

“It has to die eventually,” Jeff reassured, replacing the red flag with a green flag.

We moved systematically from one volcanic nest to the next, repeating the process of dousing and trapping roughly 15 red-flag-marked burrows. Each time, an ensnared wasp circled furiously in its glass prison. By the time we retreated inside, exhausted and fresh out of ammonia, an hour of our "the kids are in bed so we can be adults and watch true crime and shit reality TV time" had passed. There were still more than 25 red flags motionlessly waiting for their lethal treatment. Surely, the ammonia-doused monsters would perish overnight. We envisioned waking to a lawn littered with the corpses of defeated cicada killers sun roasted beneath their glass tombs.

Sadly, the following day failed to match our imagined scene of triumph. We were horrified to find that many of these subterranean saboteurs outsmarted us by utilizing their dive-bombing techniques to create an exit beneath the rim of the glass. Our spirits sank. We would have to escalate our tactics if we hoped to best these tenacious insects. As we gazed across the neighborhood, still dotted with the red flags signaling unfinished business, we steeled ourselves for more aggressive approaches. They had won this battle, but the war was far from over.

Clearly, we needed help with eradicating these marauding air demons because the google machine on the interwebs failed us miserably with its ammonia suggestion. So we did what all sensible people would do - we shelled out stacks of cash to so-called “professional exterminators.” Each one sauntered in with rehearsed bravado, insisting they could vanquish the persistent pests. They regaled us with grandiose tales, touting their particular “child and pet safe” insecticide concoctions as the end all be all. Some even offered “guarantees,” yet a quick review of the fine print revealed loopholes galore in these shifty, contractual promises. Each one had a slew of insects exempt from their so-called guarantee, with the ground digger wasp conveniently topping each list. In the end, every last one of those hapless hustlers failed us. A big-name local company, which shall remain nameless but is represented by a giant blue termite mascot visible from a well-traveled highway in Rhode Island, was the most expensive failure. You know who you are.

Then there were the countless cans of Raid we bought. Those were about as effective as trying to take down an elephant with a peashooter. I swear I heard the undaunted wasps cackling with laughter as they fluttered away after being coated with the stuff. 

The only thing more irritating than the wasps themselves was everyone's unsolicited advice when I rhetorically complained about the wasp war. Suddenly, most of my inner circle became backseat exterminators or wannabe entomologists. While a dismissive "mmhmm that sucks" would have sufficed, I got variations of this stupidity:

“Just leave them be! They’re harmless!” 

“But they’re only active a few weeks a year!”

“Don’t kill them! They control the cicada population!” 

“Have you tried an exterminator?” 

There’s something deeply infuriating about people doling out their judgy one-liners from the safe haven of their wasp-free yards. Sure, ground digger wasps are ::sigh:: docile and rarely sting humans, but try telling that to our young children when their former playground transforms into a scene from a low-budget horror movie for eight weeks each summer. Research, logic, and droves of real entomologists will protest the innocence and “necessity” (eye roll) of these flying fiends. However, until hundreds of them fly around your yard for weeks on end, you have no platform to stand on with me, so save your breath (I may have just #triggered myself here). Furthermore, New England summers are fleetingly brief, and the best weather just so happens to fall during the weeks when these bastards are active. Doesn’t that figure?

With chemicals and professionals officially off the table, our eradication attempts have become desperate, brazen, and remarkably less sophisticated as the years have passed. Over time, our fear mostly dissipated, leaving ample space for unrestrained rage. Isn't this what is referred to as "natural progression?" It's like how Bruce Banner gives way to the Hulk when he gets angry enough. While Jeff hasn’t (yet) ripped his shirt off and turned a vibrant green color, he has changed up his approach quite a bit since our ammonia-pouring antics of 2017. 

In the summer of 2021, he resorted to using the jet setting on the garden hose and his foot. Allow me to explain. He would stun the beast with water, then step on it before it could regain its bearings. Simple but effective.

Now, I don’t want to speak for anyone, but you'd think stepping on a wasp the same way you'd squish an ant or spider would do the trick, but as is always the case with these paranormal pests, it's not that straightforward. Killing a ground digger wasp through blunt force trauma inflicted by a foot requires the same amount of pressure exerted by an enraged male African elephant ... which is roughly 36,000 - 48,000 pounds of pressure, if you’re wondering (I hope Google was more accurate with this detail than the ammonia nonsense). Anything less than a hefty stomp with a forceful ankle-twisting squish, and the waterlogged wasp will fly away unscathed while you swear uncontrollably, feeling like a failure. 

This brings me back to the stomping I mentioned earlier. Though the spray and stomp method was adequate, the task was never-ending. Hose in hand and irritation plastered across his face, my persistent husband spent over an hour each evening exacting vengeance. He would proudly text me with wasp “kill counts” or update me during one of his water-chugging breaks. The first "Spray and Squish Summer" saw over 120 meet their demise under Jeff’s size 12 Nikes. With that impressive number, we were confident the following year would result in fewer ground gremlins.

SPOILER ALERT: Our assessment was as accurate as a magic 8 ball after too many martinis.

Jeff, determined and sexy as ever, thought he needed to “get out there earlier in the season” and start his wasp murdering before they could lay eggs. So, in the summer of 2022, that’s what he did.

Now, I feel silly admitting this, but that also did nothing. 

In the Summer of 2023, we moved on from the hose and adopted an even less sophisticated net and stomp method. This revised process was less hassle than the hose and allowed us to pummel the bastards point-blank while contained for guaranteed squashing.

So, if you have stuck with me this far, tell me – WHAT IS THE LESSON FROM THIS NEVER-ENDING WASP WARFARE? Perhaps: always read the fine print, or replace reactionary rage with calm strategy? But honestly, those moralizing platitudes feel far too simplistic for such a harrowing saga.

I’m more inclined to say that the lesson is don’t underestimate your enemy, no matter how stupid they seem. I once described these insects as “the spawn of Count Dracula and Elmer Fudd.” Meaning if you crossed the ominous, horror-fueled nature of the former with the utter ineptitude of the latter, the result would be the ground digger wasp. As much as it pains me to admit this, I was wrong (yes, I actually wrote the words "I was wrong" when describing myself). Somehow, these dirt-digging deviants bested us at every turn. Ground digger wasps are remarkably resilient, persistent, and crafty. If there is one adjective that cannot be used to describe them, it is stupid.

I have no doubt that the summer of 2024 will bring more dive-bombing cicada killers tearing up our lawn and terrorizing the neighborhood. Our kids are getting older, as is Jeff  – I am eternally 25 – and life is a lot more busy with sports, dance, vacations, and other summer activities. We likely won’t have the time or patience to swing a net and stomp insects daily for 8 weeks during our busiest season. I guess it’s true that nature always finds a way. 

Shit… That’s the lesson, isn’t it?