This was taken from the Lovely County Citizen in the spring of '05. The only newspaper of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, made me stick to 350 words in my twice-a-month colulumn. It made me very concise. I had a picture and a byline, too. Nyaaahh.

 

THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 3-29-05 

EMERGENCE, SEE?

 This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the colulumn. It was taken on a thankfully cold morning, otherwise I would not be here to write this. I just thought I'd relate the tale. This is MY blog, after all.

While on the tail end of an exterior restoration on Arch Street in Little Rock Arkansas, I had my lead carpenter out early to look at a set of stairs that led to an upstairs studio in the carriage house behind the main house. I got up on a ladder to point out the needed repairs to Jim Santini, who watched from six feet below as I pointed. "What's that by your head?" he asked, and when I turned, I saw this thing four inches from my face.

"I'm going to get off the ladder very, very slowly," I said, not drawing another breath until I was down. We were in the shadow of a thirteen story apartment complex, and the paper wasps, to which I am HIGHLY allergic, were sluggish on the cold morning.

We stood there and looked at them for some time. I told the homeowner to get rid of them before my crew would return. He did.

 

This is the article, er, colulumn. I wrote it three years after the picture was taken.

 

 

 

          I’ll try to make this brief. After all, it might be too late by the time you read this. You know what I’m talking about.

Ladybugs and wasps.

Five years ago, I moved from Little Rock into a new log cabin.

My first project was a 3-story addition to the Piedmont house, where I finished both new rooms’ interiors with tongue-in-groove siding. The owner was happy, the guests were treated to a fine view and a finer meal, and all seemed right with the world, if you don’t count the Gummint’s occasional bombing of a small Islamic country. The job started in August, was finished by December, and the next May, All Hell broke loose.

“You must have left a hole open somewhere,” the bellicose owner complained over the phone. “There’s red wasps everywhere!” I said I’d be right over.

Indeed, hundreds of red wasps were bobbing about the vaulted ceiling, banging their little waspy heads on the windows, and sluggishly emerging from cracks in the interior woodwork. But an outside inspection showed no holes at all.

They were gone in a day.

I puzzled about this until it happened again, this time at my house. I also have interior paneling from which hundreds of the sleepy wingstings emerged. My dogs eagerly ate them, crying from the stings. Maybe they’re like puppy jalapeños.

It was last year that I figured it out. In March, just as the weather warmed, tens of thousands of ladybugs began to infest the house, or so I thought. But when I found one of their behind-the-cupboard hiding places, where they were thousands deep, I got it.

Wasps and ladybugs begin looking for winter hiding places in October, and they hang around your doors, just waiting to come in and hole up one at a time. But they come out en masse. In the case of wasps, you just have to wait a day or two for them to leave. Ladybugs take longer.

So the next time they emerge, don’t call me. Especially if you’re the new owner of the Piedmont House or any other wood-paneled building.