When I was in Kodiak I bought a used (very used) big homemade trailer for my Argo. It had a large tool box bolted to the front of it. Since this box tended to fill up with water when it rained or when the snow piled up on it melted, I drilled a couple of large holes in its bottom. One summer morning my daughter sat on that box and yellow jackets started to come out of the holes. Fortunately they were still sluggish (Kodiak summer nights are like "cold" Alabama winter days), and she wasn't stung. I took a can of wasp and hornet killer, opened the lid a crack and sprayed lots of it inside. After a while I opened the box and found out that the wasps had built a nest attached to the cargo straps I kept in the box that I used to secure the Argo when I trailered it. If I had stuck my hand in the box without looking to get those straps out I would have had a nasty surprise. Here in Alabama we have some big reddish wasps with very long hind legs. They say they are not very aggressive unless you get too close to their nest, but that their sting is very painful. Well, I noticed one day that the fan above the kitchen range was not drawing smoke and steam as it should. I went outside to look at the vent, and I could see red wasps going in and out of it. They had built a nest in it. I went in, placed a piece of thick foil on a burner, placed black peppercorns and dry bay leaves on it, plus a tablespoonful of cayenne pepper, turned the fan on, and turned on the burner. Within minutes all the wasps had vacated the nest. That night they clustered together under the eaves to stay warm, and early the next morning I terminated the whole colony with a stream of wasp and hornet killer. Then I sprayed some of it on the nest and later pulled not one but two nests out of the vent, each as large as a grapefruit. Good thing we had not pulled out the filter that covers the fan ad the duct to clean it before we discovered the nests, or very likely the wasps would have swarmed into the house...
Sorry about the long O.T. I got carried away...
