Think-Thank-Thunk

One moment, you’re snacking peacefully on toast with peanut butter, the next, all hell breaks loose when a wasp starts dive-bombing random targets around the room.

The toast? Fuggetaboutit. One eye’s on the wasp, the other, frantically scanning for potential weapons–a fly swatter, a magazine, a shoe, a flame-thrower.

For the briefest of moments, you consider that toxic bug spray in the closet. Then you spot it. Sitting on the coffee table, not three feet away, is Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth. The weapon of choice for desperate wasp killers.

Perfect.

You grab it, crouch, and do your best “harmless furniture” imitation, trying your best to blend in to your environment so as not to arouse suspicion. For a moment, the wasp hovers near the blades of a ceiling fan. Next, it bobs and weaves toward the wall. For what seems an eternity, it darts around a window. Maybe it dives at an armchair.

Adrenalin laced thoughts bounce around your skull.

Why can’t it just land and make it easy for me.

If it lands on the curtains, will I be able to squish it between the book and the wall?

Do wasp guts stain?

Maybe I should take a swing at it in mid-air.

Maybe, though, I’d just make it mad.

If I make it mad, will it fly down the front of my shirt, sting me mercilessly, then crawl up my neck and into my ear?

I wonder how that teacher dude in Karate Kid picked off that fly with a pair of chopsticks.

I wish I was him right now.

Meanwhile, pretending not to see you, the wasp bounces nonchalantly against the ceiling.

Suddenly it dives right at you, causing you to flail your arms and make panicky grunting noises.

The wasp, chuckling with satisfaction, glides back up to the ceiling fan, lands on one of the lights, turns, and appears to give you an obscene gesture.

What are you going to do? Trash a perfectly good light fixture? Even if you did take a swing, the bugger’s protected by the other lights, fan blades, and curved nature of the glass around the bulb.

And now you begin to grasp the reality of the situation: You could be at this all night.

Curses. Bloody Red Barron.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. And today I make my revenge by revealing an ancient technique I learned while studying in the orient. The same one I used on that actual unsuspecting wasp in the picture above.

Warning: the following pictures are of a graphic and violent act perpetrated against a real wasp that actually flipped me the bird.

Follow these steps exactly–there is no room for error. Failure to do so could result in death by wasp sting to the inner ear.

1. Quickly find a scissors.
2. Sneak up behind the wasp.
3. Using one fluid motion, thrust the scissors forward, snip, and slice the son-of-a-(insert bad word here) in two.

Usually all that’s left after that is to pick up the pieces. The only tricky part is getting close enough with your opened scissors before it takes flight. As risky as this seems, most wasps are so blinded by arrogance they never suspect any trouble. It’s not their experience that men, sneaking around light fixtures with toast crumbs on their face, are actually highly trained killing machines.

While I’ve never actually been stung doing this, you should know, while very slick, this technique is not completely foolproof.

Take tonight for instance.

After the wasp landed in the ceiling fan, I looked around for a scissors–but the only one I could find was one of those plastic-child-not-really-sharp-ones. Still, I didn’t think it would make a difference.

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I just missed my mark. But what happened next wasn’t exactly by the book. Instead of cutting it in two, I somehow managed to only pinch its antennae between the tip of the scissor blades.

Don’t ask me how. It’s never happened before. In fact, I later called the office of Strange But Totally Cool Ways to Kill Dangerous Insects and they told me that the odds of this happening are actually like a bazillion to one.

Anyway, after having my daughter take a picture. I found another scissors in an old Swiss Army Knife and took care of business.

So, domestic men of the world, rejoice. No longer are we at mercy of this dangerous menace.

Just remember to wipe the food off your face when you’re done.