Christmas 2003: II

One Yellow Jacket Is Enough

Brad’s brother, Todd, is working in his MBA at Georgia Tech and has become a die-hard Yellow Jackets fan. He lives close by and can often be found at our house, especially on Sundays during a Redskin game. On crisp October Sunday we found more than one Yellow Jacket in our house… we noticed 10 in our walk-in closet. “Noticed” may be too weak a description for finding 10 angry bees in your closet. “Noticed” may be too weak a description for the sudden realization that a bee has hidden in the blue jeans you just slipped on… Brad was “noticing” a sharp pain in his left butt check the rest of the day. After such an unwarranted assault, Brad declared a ‘bee jihad.’ He emptied several bottles of Raid into the nest in the foundation beneath the closet and used at least two canisters of caulk to seal any holes in the closet through which the bees were finding a way inside. By Tuesday morning we didn’t have 10 bee in our closet anymore… we had 20! Finally we called the man the professionals call; someone who we’ve come to know as the Croc Hunter. Just like his namesake, he was armed with a fearless attitude and a strange accent (although this one was the South Georgia variety rather than the New South Wales variety). Like a modern day Marlin Perkins, he instructed his assistant, whose name we could swear was Jim, to rid us of our unwelcome guests. It was, by their own estimate, the fifth largest colony they’d ever seen. They returned three times to before we were finally rid of this menace. We are glad to report that we now have no bees… and a very well insulated closet.