Yellowjacket Man

Yesterday my son Jaden came running in the front door screaming in terror. "I've been stung!!" It was the first time he's been stung by anything in his almost 9 years of life.

"What was it?" I asked as I was making a poultice of baking soda and water to apply to his sting. He didn't know, and was in too much pain to care. All of a sudden, as we're in the kitchen attending to his sting he screams again, "OH NO! It stung me again, just now on my thumb!"

I saw the culprit, albeit briefly, as it flew away. It must've come in with him on his clothes. Poor little guy! By now he was really petrified that somehow it was going to get him again, or that they were following him ready to attack him out of nowhere like monster in a bad horror movie. He ran into my office and shut and locked the door, crying and screaming.

I stayed in the kitchen looking for the thing. I didn't even know exactly what I was looking for...was it a wasp? A bee? Perhaps the Africanized Honey Bees had finally made their way this far up North? I searched for a good ten minutes and I couldn't see it anywhere. Finally I looked down on the seat of the chair my son had been sitting in, and there it was - a yellow jacket! I picked it up with a pair of tweezers (it must have been tuckered out from all that stinging) and called my son out of the office to show him that I did indeed find it, and it wasn't going to hurt him anymore (especially after I flushed it down the toilet).

When my DH got home I told him what had happened. He was going to investigate further today outside in front where my son and his little friend had been playing when they were attacked (oh, yeah, his playmate got stung, too, but we didn't find that out until later). So, armed with tools to pry up the timbers around our flower beds, my DH pulled up the wood where we could see the yellow jackets entering and exiting. Sure enough, there was a nest about the size of a football. They are now all toast. Torching them seemed to take care of the problem.

To calm my son down yesterday my daughter and I told him that maybe, like Spiderman, his stings will turn him into a "Yellowjacket Man." At least it got him laughing, and took his mind off of the pain. If he starts buzzing and turning aggressive I'll really start to worry.