Our little slice of Wolf River backwater paradise recently added an inexpensive swimming pool. Our daughter, Kalispell, loves to cool off in this 15-foot by 4-foot-deep water hole. I’m not too impressed with the leaking filter pump, but for $250, I can’t complain too much.
Once we had our pool set up and full, my wife noticed that one of our nearby plants in her extensively landscaped flower garden had an unwelcome visitor: a colony of yellow jackets. These meat-eating wasps are the ones that love to sneak into your soda or beer can at picnics, or swarm around garbage bins at festivals.
They are often aggressive, and can sting multiple times without dying, as all wasps and bumblebees can.
Last year, we had yellow jackets setting up shop by some spare plastic barrels I have near our garage. They required extensive spraying to get rid of.
Yellow jackets typically nest in the ground, in colonies that can number in the thousands of wasps. I can’t imagine disturbing such a nest and having these little venom-injecting beasts swarming me, but I still recall the time my younger brother and his young friends were tossing pop cans at a nest under the foundation of a friend’s house. When they ran inside, my brother stayed outside — and that’s when he found out personally that one yellow jacket can sting many times.
I sprayed down the poolside yellow jacket nest twice with a combination of wasp killer and ant killer. The first time didn’t slow them down, but the second time, I applied more spray and it seemed to do the trick.
Remember to spray only at night, when the wasps aren’t active.
Living in the country has its rewards, but we seem to have more than an abundance of creepy-crawlies.
Paper wasps, which are much less aggressive than yellow jackets, love to build nests in the overhead door corners of our two garages. I generally tolerate them for a bit, but when I find myself cringing every time I walk near them, I get out the spray and give them a good zam. I love the new long-distance spray cans that let you stay up to 15 feet away and deliver the death mist.
One thing I learned is that if you remove the nest after spraying, they’ll often build another one before the season is over. But if you leave the well-sprayed nest, they won’t come back.
Mud daubers, those solid-black wasps that seem to “wink” their wings at you when they are getting mud from a puddle for their nests, are the least aggressive of all wasps and seldom sting. I normally don’t even bother spraying their single-cell mud nests.
Yellow jacket traps can work, but keep in mind that when you bait a trap with meat or something sweet, you are actually drawing wasps to you. Obviously if you are having an event, these can help if you put the traps far away from where the people are.
Ticks, on the other hand, will find you no matter where you go, especially if you like to camp, hike or otherwise wander through the forests and parks.
It’s almost an annual ritual to find at least one or two ticks on us. I do feel a bit of relief when I find a wood tick crawling on me, saying, “At least it’s not a deer tick.” The bigger wood ticks, which can be the diameter of a lady bug, are much easier to notice than a deer tick, which are about the size of the opening in a retractable ballpoint pen.
Deer ticks, of course, may carry Lyme disease, although not all of them do. Wood ticks can carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and other diseases, but if you get them off before they’ve attached for a long time, your chances of getting sick are slim.
Some of the best deer tick identification information is available at the American Lyme Disease Foundation website: www.aldf.com/lyme.shtml
Lyme disease is the most common “arthropod-borne” disease in the United States, with more than 150,000 cases reported since 1982, but the disease is difficult to diagnose and confirm, the ALDF notes.
Here’s a great source for tick identification, including an app for your smart phone from the University of Rhode Island: www.tickencounter.org/tick_identification.
If you ever suspect Lyme disease, the best way to go is to just get a three-week treatment with antibiotics and don’t even bother with testing. That’s what an Affinity doctor did for me one year when I had a suspicious-looking bite and flu-like symptoms. The Lyme tests are unreliable and antibiotics are cheap. Early treatment is the key to prevent long-term damage from the disease, which can include severe crippling.
My wood tick was attached to my back, but had not begun to feed much if at all. I felt a hard lump on my back before getting in the shower, and pulled him loose. Be sure you don’t tear off the head and leave the mouthparts in you. Wash the bite site thoroughly with soap and water, then apply some antibiotic cream. If you see a bulls-eye rash or experience a fever, nausea, vomiting, chills or other flu-like symptoms, get to the doctor immediately. If you can bring the tick along, so much the better.
DEET will chase off ticks pretty well, as it does for mosquitoes, but permethrin for boots and clothing is even better. Be sure to use this only on garments and not on skin.
Don’t let wasps, bees and ticks ruin your fun this summer. Protect yourself (especially if you are allergic to wasp or bee stings) and stay alert. Be sure to have someone check you for ticks when you come inside and don’t take any chances against these tiny-but-evil menaces.
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