<font color=blue>"...but.. this brings this thread to a sudden close. See you all at the next one..."</font color=blue>
Well....it's time to revive this thread so I can tell about my recent battle with yellow jackets....and this one is a doozy.
Last week I was working at the computer one morning and all of a sudden one of these buggers came at me. I tracked this bugger down to my wife's study where I found half a dozen of his compatriots buzzing in the room by the window. Looking quickly around, I found these critters had started digging a hole through the sheetrock behind her computer desk and bookcase. I knew immediately I had a situation that demanded immediate attention.
I saw the small hole they were excavating and fetched the vacuum cleaner to draw them out. Little did I realize that there wasn't much sheetrock left where they were excavating. These buggers were consuming the sheetrock /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif At first contact with the vacuum cleaner, a fist size hole quickly fell away and dozens of these critters started invading Judy's study. Lucky I was there with the vacuum cleaner. But, even this didn't stop some of them from swarming into the room. Well, I kept at them for about 10 minutes trying to suck as many of them out of this hole as possible....I also got a good part of the nest. After 10 minutes, the buzzing stopped, I placed a board over the hole, and I thought this was the end of the battle.
Battle -- Phase II
This afternoon we arrived home from work and again there was a swarming and buzzing around the hole in the wall of my wife's study. This time, I went onto the roof, found the crack along the roof line and wall of house where the yellow jackets were entering and decided to attack them with some old Ortho Pest Killer with Diazinon (this is great stuff which I haven't been able to replace). Within minutes, this made the yellow jackets furious as all get out. Going back into the study, we heard such an enormous swarming, we felt they were digging and scratching another hole to get out.
Now, we had to formulate a battle plan on the run here. We decided to arm ourselves with double barreled vacuum cleaners. I would pull away the board covering the first hole sucking up as many yellow jackets as I could. My wife would be my rear guard sucking up the critters that got by me with a second vacuum cleaner.
Into action we went. I pulled the board away....boy, were these critters mad. We spent another good 5 minutes sucking up dozens of these buggers that were trying to escape their Diazinon soaked nest.
So, I think we finally did it. We felt like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday with our double barreled vacuum cleaners attacking a nest of evil doers. The next couple days will determine if we succeeded.
Moral of this story....be persistent and innovative with these critters and attack then relentlessly. And, if you use a vacuum cleaner, don't leave it in the house afterwards. These buggers eat through the paper filter and rubber gaskets trying to escape.
Until the next battle....
Bob
