House Arrest

LB, Ada, and I have been held captive in our house the past several days. I don’t mean ankle bracelets or masked men holding us up. The Andre the Giant of all hornets has been holding us hostage. Or, I think it’s a hornet. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a Chihuahua with wings hovering outside our front door. He’s been hanging around for a couple weeks, but never on a consistent basis. I think he’s just periodically checking in to make sure we know he is still boss.

You can only push a Dad so far when the safety of his family is involved. This past weekend, I finally decided enough was enough. I was tired of taking heat from this winged bully and tired of him thinking he was better than us because he had a exoskeleton. He may have a stinger, but I have flip-flops and I’m not scared to use them. The first chance that came along, I was going to take him out.

It just so happened Sunday morning LB's sister, Ann, saw him chilling on the sidewalk that runs from the driveway to the front porch. I figured now would be my best chance since he was in my terrain, concrete, and out of his comfortable surroundings, the shrubbery. I slowly slipped my rubberized weapon of choice from my foot to my hand and channeled my innermost ninja instincts. I went into stealth mode and slowly crept up behind him. As soon as I got within striking distance, he spun around as if it to say, “You wanna dance, let's dance!”

He didn’t fly away, he stayed there. I tried to circle around to get behind him but he just hopped in circles, not letting me flank him. It probably looked a lot like the famous scene of the Tank Man at Tiananmen Square. We just stood there staring at each other, eye to 1000’s of eyes, like a scene at the OK Corral. I'm pretty sure I even saw tumbleweed roll by in our neighbor’s yard. This was shaping up to be 15 round heavyweight bout, but I didn’t think I had the endurance he did and I had to be at church in 10min to help set up the audio equipment, so I had to act quickly.

I made my move, a quick, powerful, downward strike with my flip-flop, hoping to initiate his second metamorphic act of his short life and turn him into goo on the concrete. I missed. Just as my shot met the ground he dodged it to the right. He was ticked. He began flying in zigzag motions through the air, and I was anticipating having one baseball-type swing at him when he decided to take his kamikaze type dive towards me. If I missed, I knew it was going to be painful.


All of a sudden, he flew away. I guess he decided he didn’t want a piece of this. Can you really blame him? I have been on my total body makeover plan for like a week and half now, no wonder he flew off like a little mamma’s arthropod. Just in case, I will heed to Ross Gellar’s advice from Friends and hone in on my Unagi skills because “Only by achieving true Unagi can you be prepared for any danger that may befall you!” I think I remember from grade school science class that hornets don’t live very long, so I will definitely be looking over my shoulder for the next couple weeks whenever I mow the lawn or go to the mailbox.

After all the action was over, I was glad I had made a stand for my family. I take pride in the fact I lived by the inspirational words of the Click-clack Under Armor guy…”We must protect this house!”