At breakfast this morning, Louie asked, “Do we have a fly? How did it get in here?”
I responded, “Yeah, I think it’s behind the blinds.”
By the sound of its banging against the blinds and window and the loud buzzing, I was sure it was one of those huge, nasty, can see its sucky-mouth-thing kind of flies.
Louie went over to open the blinds. “It’s a huge wasp!” I looked over and saw it angrily flying into the window over and over.
I jumped up and ran towards Charlie’s toy bucket, while Louie ran towards Charlie. “Protect Charlie!” I yelled, as I crossed over the play yard gate. I grabbed a plastic tub and lid and headed towards the wasp. It flew away from the window, so I started swinging the tub through the air butterfly-catcher-style. The part of me that was still rational thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go after the wasp, but that was drowned out by the more urgent thought that persisted, “Keep it away from Charlie! Don’t let it sting Charlie!”
Being more reasonable, Louie instructed me to open a window and just trap it between the glass and screen. But the wasp flew against the glass, I placed the tub over the wasp.
The adrenaline wore off, and I became squeamish again, trying to figure out a way to keep the wasp in the tub and not risk escape as I put the lid on. Finally, Louie and I settled on foil because it was thin but less flimsy than paper, and we could fold it over the edges of the tub’s opening. We worked together to ease the wasp and tub over. We creased and pressed the foil around the mouth of the tub, then I pressed the lid shut over the foil.
“Look Charlie, a wasp.” He laughed. Then when I started to walk away, he started crying. So I showed him the wasp again. “See the wasp?”
(Photo cross-posted on Instagram)
We discussed options. I wanted to let it go. Louie told me not to get stung. I went downstairs, held the door open, and opened the lit partway. Nothing. The wasp had settled at the bottom of the tub. I pushed the tub up and out into the air (you know, the way people let birds go free?). Still nothing. I contemplated just setting the container down without a lid and running inside. But I didn’t want to litter.
Finally, after waiting for pedestrians to move past (including a little girl on a balance bike who started up at me as she walk/rode past), I made my way to a nearby bush, removed the lid, put the tub over one of the branches, watched the wasp climb on the branch, pulled the tub away, then ran back towards my apartment building as my pants started to fall off. I think I partially mooned whoever was out there. (Note to self: wear better fitting pants when planning to run away from potentially angry wasps.)
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