Isn’t Hypocrisy Fun?

 

To the north of our house is a gazebo, about 12 by 12, roofed, electrified, cement floor.  It’s a lovely place to sit in the shade during the heat of the day.  It’s a wonderful place to put your feet up after working, or a place to have a drink, whether you’re smoking a cigar or not. 

Today as I sat there considering a toad who was working his way under the table that supported my feet, a wasp, black, nipped in the middle, stinger hanging out the back came to rest on my shoe. 

Bees are part of God’s plan.  Wasps are one of Lucifer’s additions to the plan.  Bees sting at the cost of their lives, so rarely do so.  Wasps sting if they have a bad hair day.  They punish the closest bit of protoplasm for the barometric pressure.  They are builders, they make paper and mud homes to raise more nasty little black terrors. 

And here was one of the devil spawn on my shoe.  Then another came buzzing down to join his compatriot.  Oh goody two of them, communicating about how to torment other beings, having a meeting right there.  They took off together, flew in tight formation up through the rafters up to the roof beams to a clump of vines, where there was a formation of other living nasties crawling and buzzing there.  It was a headquarters for a network of assassins!

The logical reaction to such a discovery is to go to the garage and find some sort of chemical that would destroy them.  I mean, I hate ‘em .  I kill ‘em right?  That’s logical. 

Large but.  There is nothing logical about killing.  There is nothing logical about putting chemicals into the environment that poison things.  I mean, this is not inside our house.  This is part of the great outdoors.  They were here before we got here.  Where do I get off treating them like they have no right to life?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Native Americans in our family tree.  Maybe it’s the Druid thing.  Who knows?  But in spite of my difficulties with killing we’ve got a problem.  If they nest up there, we can’t rest in peace.  It’s like Orcs setting up a nest next to my Elven home.  Ain’t happenin’. 

Ok, no chemicals.  But water is natural, isn’t it?  So, I moved the cushions, got the hose with the best pressure, made sure there were no kinks in it, set the controller on ‘power wash’, and blasted the living crap out of the headquarters.

Call me a nasty non-environmentally aware idiot, or call me a hypocrite, why didn’t I use poison?  Go ahead, call me names.  But this is the best I can do to make deals with my better angels and my demons.  The wasps can build in my trees, down by the creek, just not here. 

I wish I could talk wasp.  I could explain the whole thing to them.  I doubt they’d appreciate my argument.  They’d sue me after they stung me.  And then they’d laugh.  I wonder what a wasp laugh sounds like.