Become Thy Enemy

As many of you know, I suffer from a spheksophobia, the irrational fear of wasps. Whenever I see them my muscles become tense, perspiration increases, and I'm overcome with an intense desire to escape. I've achieved a certain degree of control over the years--I don't run from a room screaming every time I see wasps or hornets--but as Charlie from Lost once said, "It wouldn't be an irrational fear [...] if I could just pull myself together, would it?"

My apartment complex is really nice, but we've had problems with wasps during the summer. For some reason they love to just buzz buzz buzz around my front door. It was getting bad this year again, and I wasn't sure I could take it, so I did some digging on the Interwebs. It turns out that wasps and hornets are dreadfully territorial beasties, and if they see a rival colony's nest they will steer clear. This means that anything that looks sufficiently like a wasp nest left hanging outside will scare most of them away. Yon-folks-who-exist-only-online are quite clever, as they offered a simple solution: brown paper liquor bags stuffed with newspaper. The results, as you can see...
are astounding. While this may not look very threatening to you,to a wasp it looks like a dangerous fortress. The first one is by our front door, the second by our back. And you know what? I've seen one wasp around our house since we put these up. One. Not half a dozen every day. (photos courtesy of my wife)

It's kinda like Batman, disguising himself as what he fears in order to frighten others. Well, maybe more like the new Batman. Who knows? Maybe I should start listening to Sting and riding around on a Vespa (it's Italian for wasp, you know).