Wasp Killer

The wasp. Body like a voluptuous South American flesh-eating airborne lizard, a Japanese concept car rendered in three-dimensional anime, or a French surrealist's dream of a sadistic psychotropic narcotic in self-propelling six-legged caplet form.

The wasp. So American in its exhausting optimism that it hangs around yellow playground slides, pink sand buckets, and red beach balls, waiting for these inanimate objects of recreational design to miraculously abandon the molecular structure of injection-molded plastic for the more profitable one of annually flowering flora and generously exude a nectar of fructose, free to the patiently moronic, the delusionally faithful, the violently exoskeletal.

The wasp. So robustly mechanical in its immunity to ennui that it will infiltrate cranny after crevice after nook after hole in the screen until it finds its way into the bedroom of a screaming child and clings as ominously immobile in the corner of the ceiling as a refrigerator magnet outfitted with a pricking modified-ovipositor stinger and a pulsing poison sac, and as hard to smush in a tissue as a segmented pecan filled with goo.

O, Wasp, o, Hornet, o, Yellow Jacket, ye know not the vengeful statement of genocidal purpose of Wasp & Hornet Killer, the bold and quite comprehensive pledge to "kill wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, and eliminate the nests where they live and breed." But Time is teacher, and ye shall learn. Ye shall know intimately the parable of "Fast knockdown," the hymn of "Jet spray reaches nests up to 20 feet away," and the psalm of "Kills returning wasps and hornets for up to 4 weeks." Oh, yes, ye shall be educated, ye Wasp, ye Hornet, ye Yellow Jacket. Ye shall die singly and in groups, dropping dead like a rain of thorax, a sleet of abdomen, a hail of head from "eaves, around screens, windows, doors, patios, cracks, holes and crevices or wherever else insects are noticed." Knowledge may be power, but the power of Wasp & Hornet Killer is knowledge too much to bear. "Also kills mud daubers." Amen.

SpectracidePro Wasp & Hornet Killer comes in a can, sprays in a stream more powerful than a Super Soaker squirt rifle, smells like gasoline or lighter fluid, and drops roaming gangs of Vespoidea and Sphecoidea in plummeting droves, as if life had been but a moment's membranous illusion. For outdoor use only. Active Ingredients: Tetramethrin (.1%), Permethrin (.25%), Piperonyl Butoxide (.5%), and Other Ingredients (99.5%). Don't tug on Superman's cape, and don't spray into the wind.

The wasp. A species possessed of the constitution of an illegal opiate. When the US cracks down on drug production and distribution in the Caribbean, the drugs erupt through Mexico. When the United States cracks down on drug production and distribution in Mexico, the drugs erupt through the Caribbean. Likewise, if the hive of a single cartel remains in your subdivision, the wasp will find a way to expand his territory into your windowsills, your dryer vents, your second-story eaves, responding to your grim spastic spray-attacks atop your teetering Home Depot collapsible ladder with the defiant buzzing fly-bys so damn infuriating to the would-be Slayer of Multitudes, the Warrior of Backyard Peace, the Protector of Picnickers and Innocent Cherubs in Inflatable Pools. Failure stings, my friends. And then it swells up like an oven-roasted tomato. Wasp & Hornet Killer. Human tool. Middle-class necessity. Guaranteed to impart a fleeting but euphoric sense of death-dealing superiority. The wasp. A pain in the ass every summer.

— David Barringer (curious@davidbarringer.com )

— graphic by Mike Fisher (crspeedy@crspeedy.com)