A strange coolness hugged the evening ground after a week of near 100º temperatures. Fireflies hung suspended above the parched grass, glowing in surreal blinks, looking for a mate to celebrate the turn of good weather. After my throw, the yellow tennis ball rolled between two trees with Rudy hard on its path. In this serenity, with frogs in the nearby pond providing background music and Rudy hassling in long-tongued joy, our backyard turned into the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.
Mid-stride, Rudy jerked as if strafed by a .50 caliber, his yelp echoing through the calm twilight, a spasm propelling him into a rolling heap of Jack Russellian pain, confusion and horror carving his snout into a morbid WTF snarl. I yelled his name, but he was too far into his grief to hear me. I thought he had broken his left leg running through a dip or perhaps had stabbed himself on a stick. Every move he made was unusual and undogish, his normally smooth motions clipped, staccato and awkward, telling a violent story with no words.
Leaping up, he twisted in a fit of tail chasing Tasmanian fury, whipping his face and ass into a blur, making it difficult to tell which end was which. All I saw were his reactions to something brutally invisible in the gloaming.
I ran after him to understand his injury and try to rescue my old friend from his torture. Within five long strides, I entered the line of fire, quickly gaining absolute understanding of the situation. Yellow jackets. Hundreds of them. Smacking my head. Stinging my arms. Bouncing off my swinging hands. Below me, Rudy flipped in a double-full like a gymnast. Even in such a nightmare circumstance, it was an impressive fete for an eight year-old dog.
Screaming for Rudy to run to the house, I battled the same striped demons he had already outrun in a hunching, tucked-tail sprint. I was not as fast, unfortunately, and the little bastards overtook me again halfway to the house. I killed two, maybe four. Rudy saw me in mid-fight and turned around, barking and biting valiantly at the buzzing squad. With each one he bit, he took a stinger in the mouth, yelping, but never stopping until I was on my way to safety. It was heroic and I heard music in my head like in the final, sappy scene of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie when the good guy wins.
Running up the steps to the deck, I yanked open the sliding glass door, Rudy bolted in, and I slammed it behind us with several trailing yellow jackets in full-on chase mode ricocheting off the glass behind me, thudding like bugs on a windshield.
Inside, my family stared in shock as Rudy and I rolled into the kitchen nursing our wounds. I’ve never heard a dog curse before, but while he licked his leg, I distinctly heard Rudy murmur, “Son-of-a-bitch!”
Standing to tell the story of what had happened to us, I realized just how many yellow jackets had Trojan-Horsed their way into our house – in my pants. Instead of saying, “We just got attacked by yellow jackets,” what came out was a reiteration of Rudy’s previous verbiage: “Son-of-a-bitch!”
The burning stings came instantly below my knees and I knew exactly what was going on as I danced my pants off into a denim heap on the
floor, stomping in my underwear, pissed-off jackets escaping into the dining room, Rudy going medieval on them once again and getting stung
even more as he chomped with angry gulps.
After the crunching of little striped bodies ended, Rudy and I nursed our swollen, red whelps and I took Benadryl. This morning, we saw two more of the attackers trying to hide in the bathroom. After dispatching them, we noticed Rudy standing at the back door, shaking with renewed anger and growling toward the spot where the yellow jackets live.
Only a few stings will convince the average person that yellow jackets are the winged spawn of Satan, but now the ones in our yard have a deviously torqued-up Jack Russell as an enemy. Yellow jackets are fast and carry serious firepower on the tips of their asses. They almost always overwhelm their foes unless it is a can of Raid, and even then, it’s a tricky maneuver to take them down. But when a Jack starts planning revenge, my money is on the dog. It did not take long.
After easing out the back door this morning, Rudy stalked his way to the hole from which the yellow jackets had emerged. Silently he turned around, careful not to disturb their underground activities, aimed his butt over the hole, and in a quick and accurate drop, filled their little front door with yesterday’s dinner. His work done, he ran from the scene and waited at the edge of the steps, watching to see if any jackets escaped. None did.
He and I slowly walked out to admire his handiwork together, like old war buddies visiting the grave of a vanquished adversary. Still no yellow jackets. Rudy’s face was confident. Under the earth, I could hear a slight buzzing that sounded a lot like insects saying, “Son-of-a-bitch!”
