Wasp vs. WASP: Low-budget Baywatch gone wrong

For those of you who don't follow my every move on social media with bated breath, you might not know that on a recent trip to Mexico, I saved a lady during a snorkeling excursion. (Unfortunately, I couldn't save her or others from the watered-down drinks also endemic to the area.)

In light of my recent heroic efforts, I feel that I should note that I was a certified lifeguard for the better part of a decade. During this time, I didn't save any lives per se, but I participate in an extermination/exorcism that potentially could have resulted in the deaths of thousands.[1]

How it went down is a story that has yet been recounted to the general public (and hopefully will never reach the ears of the pool's insurance holders.)

A far cry from Laguna Beach
The summer after my senior year of high school, I worked with my sister at a local, large outdoor public pool in Indiana. It was the kind of place where local swim and diving teams practiced in the early mornings and late evenings and during the day, the locals came to use it as a communal bath tub.[2]

Entry was $2 per day. This was the kind of place welfare queens used instead of daycare. This was the pool where a woman delivered her sixth child right on the pool deck because she “didn’t feel like going to the hospital” (which was less than a mile away). This was the kind of place where the daycares that doubled as meth labs took their charges during the day to get them "fresh air."

But for real guys, he might be our next president....

Needless to say, it was a classy establishment. If Kid Rock had showed up with a gaggle of midget strippers in tow, the crowd would have welcomed him with open arms.

That summer was particularly rainy with lightning storms occurring at the same frequency that right-wing evangelists believed they would when Obama got elected- or when we gave women the right to vote.

But despite El Nino’s and Mother Nature’s best combined efforts to shut down the pool, we were required as lifeguards to stay on duty in case “it cleared up,” in which case, the pool rats could stop clinging to the outside gate and come back in. (And by rats, I mean literal rats and metaphorical rats- ie. the kids whose moms left them there while they OD'd in a trap house somewhere.)

Plus, the dive team still practiced because let’s face it, if any of them got struck by lightning, Governor Pence would explain that God strikes down anyone who His holiness thinks is gay. Guys in Speedos? Well…..it's questionable.

To entertain ourselves while it was thundering and lightning, we would take the cooking oil from the concession stand and make the water slide incredibly slippery and strap as many innertubes around us as possible, hold onto each other’s ankles, and see how fast we could go down the water slide.

While it was lightning.

(Don't judge. Other teenage hobbies in the Midwest include meth cooking and teenage pregnancy.)

If we were on the clock, it also meant that we had to do obligatory cleaning, which pretty much meant throwing bleach on everything and then just hosing it down. (Again, insurers, I hope you’re not reading this.)

Who needs wildlife control when you have girls in bikinis?

It also meant "wildlife control," which entailed tossing the raccoons nesting in the garbage cans over the fence first thing in the morning- or, if you were a huge asshole- at your friends. (I really hope there’s a statute of limitation on charges of wildlife endangerment.)

Until this point, "wildlife control" had only consisted of removing aforementioned raccoons and a handful of bugs.

However, my manager, a 25-year-old dudebro named Mike, had another task for us on this particular day.

An actual wasps' nest from an entomological site who I'm sure is happy I'm using it for this blog.

Underneath the waterslide, the largest family of wasps ever had built what can only be described as the Playboy mansion of wasps nest.

No, scratch that, it was like a Branch Davidian compound wasp nest.

“So guys, we need to get rid of it,” Mike said, as seven of us staff stood around, gazing up in wonder.

“We should just like….let them be, man. They’re not hurting us,” offered Keller my sister’s 16-year-old boyfriend at the time.

Keller would later go on to earn infamy later in the summer when he tried to pierce his own tongue using a golf tee.

(I know what you’re thinking- how did these kids have time to work with their intensive Ivy League summer reading lists?)

“Well we should knock it down,” suggested Greg.

“Then there will be wasps on the ground, duh,” countered Emily, who until this very moment, I always thought was the dumbest one on our staff of Rhodes Scholars.

“We should start it on fire,” Chad suggested. “Burn those mother f****ers out!”

“Our dad works for Orkin and I know they use chemicals,” I suggested.

NOTE: during this whole ordeal, my sister and i, who have a dad who is A CERTIFIED BUG HIT MAN, never once considered consulting our dad or suggesting that our boss call him.

“What kind of chemicals?” Mike asked.

“I dunno….ones that kill bugs,” I replied.

“Ok, Greg, go get some hazardous chemicals. Zoe, you and your sister know what you’re doing-“

No, no we did not. We had never once gone to work with our dad nor had we any idea how to exterminate bugs. We were literally unqualified except for the fact that our dad worked for….

Oh my God! Now I understand why Ivanka has a position in the government!

I googled both "surprised Ivanka" and "Ivanka surprise face" and this is the best I got.

We went up top with an assortment of germicides and other cleaners that Greg rounded up. I assumed one must kill bugs. After all, our 25-year-old pool dudebro manager couldn’t possibly be wrong, could he? He was the white male patriarchy, so he couldn't possibly be wrong.

When you assume, you make an…
What we didn’t notice below was that someone also had provided dudebro manager with a commercial grade grill lighter (with the power of a flamethrower) as well as a golf club.

(Surprisingly no one from this crew ever joined the PGA tour.)

My sister, Greg, and I were up top and being the oldest, I took it upon myself to not just spray the nest, but to douse it with the amount of liquid that the staff of Huffington Post must cry in liberal tears each morning.

“OK, I did it!” I called down.

“They still alive?” Mike called back.

“Uh yeah, I think so. But I think they’re getting pissed,” I replied, not needing a degree in entomology to tell me that.

What happened next can only be described as the kind of nuclear attack that our fearless current president wants to unleash on North Korea. (And Alec Baldwin, Rosie O'Donnell, CNN...)

The nest went up in flames and thousands of tiny, angry creatures swarmed out. Half were on fire, making them angrier than before.

These wasps were as triggered as a liberal whose gender you just assumed.

This series of events prompted the rest of the staff to panic and in turn, throw random items at the nest, causing fiery pieces of wasp nest to land around the pool deck.

“Go! Go! Down the slide!” I shouted to my sister and Greg.

As all three of us attempted to untangle our intertwined limbs as we careened down the slide (still slick with cooking oil)? someone took a golf club and decided to knock the nest down so that the slide didn’t catch on fire.

In their panic, their swing was off.

They. Knocked. The. Nest. Into. The. Pool.

This meant that we couldn’t come up for air without risking the wrath of an angry wasp or two.

Dead, but not gone
It also meant that the pool was quickly filling up with dead wasps that to this day, I swear can swim- and were coming for me.

In the end, we had to spend the rest of the afternoon skimming the pool for wasp carcasses as our boss pleaded with us not to tell the parks department by promising us time and a half.

Never Forget...
And on that day, I learned several important career lessons: a) dirty work only sucks if you work for someone smarter than yourself and b) It’s ok to be the one who sprays the chemicals, just never the one holding the golf club.

[1] I assume wasps could potentially carry some sort of lethal West Nile strain

[2] When Phish came to tour, their followers used it as a literal bath tub