So, I’m just settling down for bed last night, when I realize that crap – I forgot to take out the garbage. Ah well…I drag myself out of bed, head outside and grab the handle of the garbage pail.
Let me digress for a moment to describe this handle – large, heavy plastic, filled with wide notches about a 1/2" deep. Really a perfect place for some buzzing little hellspawn to spend the night.
Anyway, I grab the handle and don’t make it two feet before ZAP!, the pad of my finger feels like someone just injected a syringe filled with lava into it. I hop around my driveway for a minute, holding back the yell I want to let out (it’s 1:00 in the morning and I’m in my underwear…rather not have the neighbors poke their head out to see what the guy next door is up to this time).
I head back inside (can’t yell here either, though…don’t want to wake the baby), and try running it under cold water. Not much relief, but some. I squeeze my finger to try and see exactly what the hell is going on here, expecting to see two little bite marks (my assumption was that it was a spider bite). Nope – just one little puncture.
Eventually the throbbing stops, and I get to sleep. When I got up this morning, what do I find lying on the ground but a dead wasp/hornet/some-kind-of-stinging-little-fucker. I scanned the web trying to ID him, but can’t find anything matching his shape and coloring.
Now, did you have a barb in you?
Hornets can sting more than once and don’t leave the remains of their barbed, stinging asses stuck to your skin all the while continuing to pump venom into your system.
If not, it was probably a hornet.
Nope. As a matter of fact, when I first picked up the little bastard this morning, it seems he was only mostly dead. I was examining him when to my surprise, he weakly retracted his tail covering and exposed his stinger.
And thank you, Danalan. I was happy to see it was a GIANT hornet rather than one of those piddling little ones.
It doesn’t look robust or chunky enough to be a giant hornet. Those things are pretty thick bodied. It looks like some variation of paper (red) wasp, which can vary considerably in coloration.
My thoughts, as well. Giant hornets are huge. I also don’t call anything a hornet unless it has vivid yellow bands* (even though the vast majority of “hornets” in North America are not true hornets). Solid colored critters or multicolored critters without the distinctive bands get called (generically) wasps until I can figure out which wasp it is.
*(The bald-faced hornet cheats by having bands so pale they are almost white, but its sting is nasty enough to leave it in the hornet named group.)
If the bald-faced hornet is the one I call the white-faced hornet I agree with you about its sting. I was once knocked off a roof by a cloud of white-faced hornets. I swear, they were the size of sparrows, and they darkened the sky. I was on the roof and tossed a rope over the peak to my buddy who was to tie it off. I hit a previously undiscovered hornet’s nest in the eaves, and they boiled out.
The guy says, “Don’t worry, they won’t come over the peak at you.” So, proving my stupidity, I duck under the peak and wait for them to settle down. One of those son of bitches is some kind of hornet Leonardo da Vinci, and apparently follows the rope over the top, leading his posse.
It’s a tough call about what to do when on the roof of a two story building being stung by hornets. I figured sooner or later I was letting go, either after they had stung me unconscious, or after the first half dozen stings. I let go. I still have a limp, but I am sure I made the right decision.
