Hive mind

Wednesday: The Hired Killer showed up while I was out, so Kiddo1 relates this story.

Hired Killer: Yellowjackets?

Kiddo1: {points} There.

Hired Killer: Gotcha.

He assembled the pole and sprayer again, but this time his assassination equipment was a good fifteen feet too short. Wise wasps pick the roof peak and then laugh at our best efforts. I imagine that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the wasps on top of my roof shouting “We fart in your general direction!”

Impervious to buzzed insults, the Hired Killer took down his too-short equipment, and then instead of saying “Sucks to be you,” he said, “What’s inside that window?”

Kiddo1 took a backhoe and plowed a path over his younger brothers’ bedroom floor toward the window, then used a shovel to get everything else out of the way. The Hired Killer slid up the window, did not die from an insect invasion, and then reassembled his equipment. To my son’s horror, he hung out the window with poles and a sprayer, then filled my attic with what the receipt tells me is half a gallon of Wasp Be Gone.

Kiddo1 did not report hearing mad screaming overhead, nor did the Hired Killer plummet onto the driveway, stung a thousand times. Instead he took my check and went home.

Wednesday Afternoon: wasps still buzzing around the roof peak, but not as many, and not seeming to go in.

Thursday: No activity.

Sunday: Wasps hanging out on the siding, but no one going inside. I don’t know if I need to call again.

Regardless, over the weekend, I noticed something: I noticed that I hesitate before going into a room, before opening the curtains. There may not be wasps in the attic, but there are wasps in my brain, lurking. I think they call that a “hive mind.” They may never come back, but in the back of my mind, I’m waiting.