Saturday, November 17, 2007

Men Killing Wasps


Don't look away, gentlemen. You KNOW this is your favored technique for killing insects. Don't pretend you've never sprayed an entire can of this stuff at a one-inch hornet in the corner of the bedroom.

I'm going to tell you something right now. The hornet, the wasp, LOVES hairspray. It LOVES it. It's Chanel Number Five to the wasp, okay? It's like breathing in pure oxygen. This of course raises the somewhat elementary question of whether a wasp actually breathes. Do they have lungs, wasps? Little tiny bellows/alveoli inside a little tiny thorax? Oh Christ, they probably do. I'm sorry I brought it up.

Anyway, this was a topic of a girlfriends' conversation recently. In a group of women I am usually one of the brave ones where bugs and spiders and wasps are concerned. You can hire me to protect you from them. You can watch me kill one with my thumb on the kitchen table (though not the wasp).

And this led to the subject of why a man thinks spraying an entire can of Raid or Pam or Right Guard onto a bug will kill it. You whack it with a magazine and get back to reading your book, that's what you do. I am John Wayne when it comes to this.

On the other side of the spectrum, I am so terrified of snakes that I start crying when I see one. The thought of seeing one will keep me away from a lovely walk in a lovely setting. There is a sign near where I have my hair done that says REPTILES AND BEYOND. It gives me a shiver when I drive by. Whatever would be beyond reptiles would be in the realm of horror movie or true and actual Hell.

I'm seeing a play today, so putting off hammer and toilet seat purchase until tomorrow.
Fan Shee Tong Sui


Have accepted sweet potato casserole and sweet-and-sour carrots as Thanksgiving assignments.

Getting to the end of the Bone Crushing Semester.
A bientot
love,
becky
http://www.statcounter.com/

4 Comments:

At 3:49 PM , Blogger Kay Cooke said...

Not only have you an admirable John Wayne hang-it-all attitude, you also know what the word 'alveoli' means? You are some woman!
Did you know that along with Ireland, NZ is the only country in the world that does not have snakes?
But we do have mice
... and rats ...
And that's why
I like cats!

 
At 8:50 PM , Blogger Becky Willis Motew said...

NO SNAKES? What a fabulous place NZ is....I could live there!!!!

Lucky you, CB

b

 
At 1:06 AM , Blogger sandman1 said...

For even more fun, use a lighter while emptying the toxic can towards an insect! Why to men like to spray bugs with things? I dunno, probably related to recent insinuations about the source of rusty toilet-seat bolts. At least we're civilized enough to use a can of something on the bug...

 
At 7:00 AM , Blogger Becky Willis Motew said...

I must say I've never seen the lighter technique, SM, and thank god for it. I will certainly never figure men out....

b

 

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