The War on Yellow Jackets

By Jim Palmer Jr.

A month ago when I walked outside at my home in the woods to enjoy a little fresh air, I was greeted with a loud and steady buzzing noise. It seemed as if all of the yellow jacket larvae had busted out of their cramped cells all on the same day… and they were hungry! My dogs slunk away from the dog dish with tails between their legs because the yellow and black pests were swarming the dog food by the hundreds.

We made a special trip to the grocery store and purchased ten of those fancy plastic hornet traps which we promptly assembled and set out. I augmented that project with the old fashioned hang-a-chicken-leg-over-the-bucket-of-soapy-water trick, and then I gleefully watched as hundreds of the mean buggers were trapped inside the plastic jail and in the soapy water within just minutes of placing the traps. But after emptying the traps time after time in the dark of night, I soon realized that this would not be enough. We were not making a dent in the population of ornery stingers.

My wife had heard from an exterminator that you could poison the demons with some secret mixture they use for that purpose, so with a little research on the internet, she found what she was looking for and ordered a batch of the brew in the mail. A day or two later the solution arrived. Like a mad scientist mixing a magic formula, we mixed the poison carefully into cans of stinky cat food and converted our plastic hornet traps into poison dispensers by drilling two ½ inch holes into the top portion of each trap. The hornets went bonkers for this mixture and several days later there was a noticeable reduction in the buzzing noise outside. But my wife was not satisfied!  Bound and determined to completely eradicate these grouchy pests, she relentlessly searched for more solutions. Another package was soon on its way from Amazon with what they called “Taurus-CS”. She donned her rubber gloves again and carefully mixed ½ teaspoon (no more, no less) of the milky poison into 11 ounces of canned chicken.  The canned chicken attracted the yellow jackets from far and wide and they gobbled the meaty solution up, toting the toxic solution back to their hidden nests.

Three days later and I’m standing outside.  No buzzing noise. I hear a neighbors dog bark in the distance and a few birds chirping near the garden... but no yellow jackets.  Just thought you might like to know that.