Watch: Exterminator tackles gargantuan wasp nest

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/27/watch-exterminator-tackles-ga.html

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Better him than me.

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Honeybadger is like, Meh

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Is this man unaware of the existence and/or utility of fire? Good lord this is terrifying.

I had two yellow jackets go after me this summer because the assholes decided my raking of the lawn five feet away from their nest required my attempted murder. They may have won round 1 handily, but it turns out that the human ability to purchase wasp spray from Target and a sense of vengeance win in the end.

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See above about asshole with wings. If you are not in a hurry and want to be nicer to the environment as the sprays don’t always get down into the nest all that well wait till night time and get a big pot of water boiling and then dump that down the nest.

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I’ve was stung by a hornet once while driving with the sun roof down. Right in the back of the neck. Nearly wrecked the car. It felt like I was shot. I will be avoiding those bastards like the plague and while exterminators may cost a fortune, I will gladly pay someone else to take the risk.

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Isn’t this what napalm is for?

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Oh man, that gave me the creeps. Now I’m afraid to go open the door on my shed.
I wonder how long it took for them to build a nest that big. I’m guessing nobody had been in that shed for a long time.

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@tobinl Did you see the size of that nest?

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jake-nope

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I was referring to the specific instance of @anon21100188.

As far as the one in the video goes…

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You misspelled “fire”.

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A lot of taxonomic confusion going on - Carla was smart to just say “wasps”!

According to Verret, the species he was dealing with were the southern yellowjacket wasps (Vespula squamosa), a common half-inch (1.3 cm) bug found in the southern US states.

They usually nest in the ground, at least in my experience. Skunks dig the nests up and eat them.

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Fuck yellowjackets. According to the Sting of the Wild guy, hornets and other wasps are pretty mellow. It’s just these guys that are assholes.
Got one caught in my jacket and lost my ever-loving shit when I was a kid.

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Tessier-Ashpool S.A. thanks you for your custom.

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Where i grew up yellow jackets from a distance looked pretty similar to bees. One day me and my friends decided it was a great idea to knock down a hive, and holy shit what a bad idea that was. They chased us down for blocks and we dove into my house. We could see them circling outside the house all pissed off for a good while.

We were smart kids. /s

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Thanks, I didn’t know that about skunks. I was traumatized by yellow jackets as a small child. Skunks are coming off my shoot on sight list.

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I’m usually a live-and-let live person, but I went over one of those nests with a lawn mower this summer, and damn if I don’t want them all to die at this point. I mean, I made an honest mistake. Do you think they cared?

No!!!

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I had a big pile of cedar with a yellowjacket nest in it, so I waited until full dark and lit it on fire. Because I was (correctly) assured that yellowjackets will not fly at night.

They will, however, crawl 30+ feet across the ground, up your pant leg, and over your boot-tops at night.

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