Talking with the bugs.

I've had some discussions with the bugs lately, and I must say they have not been very satisfying. We have been unable to reach an accommodation. Steps have now been taken. 

The gnats, for one thing, have been much more poorly behaved this year than in the last couple of years. I suspect that it is because the spring started very wet and turned very dry, and for some reason this created an opportunity for them to get going in earnest. The backyard has been almost a no-fly-zone because of their insistence on getting in my face. 

Me: Get out of my face, gnats.

Gnats: Make us.

Me: Why are you hanging around me? You're not drinking my blood like those other flying pests. What do you want?

Gnats: To drive you insane by going in various orifices in your deliciously moist and salty face. 

Me: Doing a good job at it. 

I would have been willing to concede the yard to them for the time being, but Izzy the hairball dog wants to go back there. Worse, he gets into the tall grass edging the property, and you know what that means. I pulled three ticks off him the other day, one of which I'm pretty sure was a deer tick. If it bit him it would die (we use Simparica Trio) but there's a good chance it would wander off him and onto me or my wife, and abracadabra! Lyme disease. 

I squished one tick in a facial tissue, but it kept squirming.

Tick: You can't kill me! I am mighty!

Me: Say hello to Davy Jones. [FLUSH]

The ticks freaked my wife out, and I was dispatched to the backyard to spray Triazicide all over the place. In years past it has worked to make tick attacks less common and seems to keep the gnats down too. Sorry, bugs; you brought it on yourselves.

Izzy likes to just hang out on the porch when the weather is nice, and it has been quite nice. Unfortunately the wasps are busy looking for places to open up their Branch Office of Hell, and they keep hanging around. I mean, I know I'm a sweetheart, but do they have to hover around me like I'm a rose? You can't swat them like flies; it just makes them mad. I have plenty of Raid to knock out any nests, but what if I'm minding my business with the puppy? An errant shot would be bad for the dog. Are they going to ruin whatever's left of my spring?

But then, my sainted bug-hating wife gave me this.

Zevo makes a line of anti-bug stuff that's safe around children and dogs. I'm not the kind of guy who buys organic or worries that a moment's exposure to pesticide is what will kill my dog ten years later. I am however the kind of guy who knows my dog will go right after the most dangerous thing present. because he's a dog. In fact, he found the scent of this can so appealing before I'd even used it, he wanted to chew on it. The products may be safe, but I'm pretty sure chewing on a pressurized can is not. 

Anyway, I got to test the spray just minutes after it arrived in the mail. A fat ol' yellow jacket came buzzing me on the porch. I whipped out the Zevo and fired. One smooth shot, a thin but concentrated line, knocked the flying schmuck out of the sky. It lay on the porch like it suddenly remembered it had a splitting hangover.

YJ: What... what was that? 

Me: There's a new sheriff in town. 

YJ: You're the guy who tries to stop us with hairspray. 

Me: That was then. 

Sadly, Zevo is not an instant kill product. The wasp got up, determined to hector me again, and I nailed it a second time. Then it flew off, never to return, and hopefully to go die somewhere else. Zevo's wasp spray ingredients are cornmint and rosemary essential oils, and unnamed soap ingredients, so although it claims to be deadly, I have my doubts. But it got the aerial-hole gone, and left the porch smelling like a pricey bodywash.  

So feel free to talk to the local bugs, and make sure to tell them who's boss. They may be venomous, and may have numbers, but we have all kinds of toxic crap and we're not afraid to use it. Well, I'm not.