Hairspray and a Fly Swatter

This might be one of those things that you just had to be there to appreciate.

However, I'll set up the background a bit, which should help.

My youngest and I have a healthy fear of wasps. Especially large red ones. For those of you who are familiar with my story about our family canoe trip on which we spent four hours on the side of the road trouble shooting the diesel engine in our Suburban, when all that was wrong was someone at the shop where it had spent the last week had hit the switch to put it on the auxiliary gas tank (which didn't register on the gas gauge) and we were out of gas.

When we arrived late afternoon, my unstoppable mate decided we'd canoe anyway, so I made a trek to the bathroom and as I was walking the path, minding my own business, a red wasp fell out of the sky, landed on my right pinky finger and stung me. My paddling hand instantly ballooned (did I mention I had a cold too?) and all our ice was in plastic containers (hubby freezes milk jugs to keep the coolers chilled) that were soundly bungeed into the canoes. So I paddled as long as I could, then dragged my throbbing hand in the cold water for awhile till we needed to steer around something.

I don't like wasps.

The next time we went canoeing in this area, we stayed at one of their cabins over night on our two-day canoe trip. This time we watched one of those nasty red buggers land on my husband's glasses and try to sting them. Eyeglasses. Before we left, one of them chased down and stung my youngest.

He doesn't like wasps either.

So yesterday I happened to be in the living room doing paperwork and looked up to find we had an unwelcome visitor in the house. I hollered, "Wasp!" at which point the defender of the castle (my youngest) sprung into action.

I read a long, long time ago, that if you don't have bug spray to kill a wasp, the next best thing is hair spray because is stiffens their wings and they can't fly. So in flies my little knight armed with a bottle of hairspray. Every time he sprays it, the wasp flies out of range of the hairspray and to another part of the house. But not after it flew right at me, and sent every paper I had in my hand flying while I ducked for cover. (Did I mention I HATE wasps!?) Naturally, my knight follows spewing hairspray everywhere, until finally the wasp isn't flying so high anymore. Ahh. Time for a good dowsing. I'm telling you, that wasp finally wore enough hairspray to keep a bee-hive hairdo in place for at least a week, if not two.

It's final landing spot was on top of the mini-blind that hangs at the kitchen door window. At this point, the wasp disappeared! Daring Knight jiggles the blinds, open and closes the door quickly, and finally grabs a trust fly swatter and is determined to hunt down his foe. He looked behind the stove, which is right by the door. Nope. He looks where the kitchen door hinges, because it's been closed on a couple spiders who still remain pressed in the door jamb. No wasp. He checks every slat on the blinds. No success. Finally he climbs up on a chair, looks down on the horizontal post that holds the mini-blind in place and finds it's a U-shape. The wasp had fallen inside.

Good enough? Nope. He pushes it out with the flyswatter, pounds it soundly and scoops it up on the flyswatter. He then presents it to me, holding the flyswatter bearing his dead foe out at arm's length and raising his can of hairspray in victory.

What would I do without my fearless son, hairspray and a fly swatter?