The Agrinautica

   Today Jeremy and I were called to a house where we'd removed a colony about a month ago. It appeared to be being scouted out by a new swarm of bees. When we informed the homeowner that these were different bees than the ones we got rid of a month ago she responded "oh I know, I could tell they looked different."
   Keeping in mind it takes professionals a large sample of bees, several hours, and a microscope, to determine between different subspecies of bees (noteably between normal Italian bees (Apis melifera lingustica), and Africanized bees (Apis melifera adansonii)), I doubt there's any way to determine between different swarms of the same kind of bee except maybe intensive DNA analysis.

   Shortly thereafter we stopped at a park because Jeremy needed to use the restroom. While I was waiting by the truck this old loon came and started asking me to verify all his preconceptions about Africanized bees. After I attempted to politely set him straight on a number of these he asked me how long I'd worked for the company. After I said "two weeks" he responded with "oh, thats why" as in, thats why I foolishly disagreed with him on his bee trivia. I was too shocked by the saucy idiocy of his statement to get appropriately mad until it was too late )=< (Jeremy came back at the moment, politely told the man he was completely wrong about the latest thing he brought up and we were off)

   Jeremy almost called off a swarm removal on account of the danger it would pose to a nearby birdnest. The birdnest turned out to be abandoned however so we continued.

   Later on Bobby got a call for yellow jackets, the most fearsome best in our jurisdiction. Consequently he called Jeremy for backup, so the three of us converged on the target area. When we arrived it turned out to be regular wasps. Lady didn't even know what a wasp nest was. How can you grow up anywhere in the northern hemisphere and not know what a wasps nest is?!
   Anyway we told the lady she was watering her lawn too much and Jeremy and I bugged out. The lawn had gone mad with water and become a lush mini-jungle in which the wasps were joyfully frolicking.

   And then there are mud daubers, a harmless sort of wasp that makes its nest out of mud. We get calls for these every day or so -- these calls invovled reaching up and pulling off the mud nest, taking more or less thirty seconds.. and people pay like $70 for us to do it! People are so silly.


   Flogging Molly tomorrow!


Picture of the Day
   I discovered the other day that flickr is not in fact perfect. Unless you fork over $25, it will only display the most recent 200 pictures you've uploaded -- so I can no longer access the earliest pictures I put up there. )= Today there will be no picture of the day in protest!

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Drunken Antics - Mike Kemp attracts the cops to Diedrichs, Cool Kyle get clobbered by a soccer net.
   Year Ago Today: Reminiscing With Kyle About the Above - and I don't think we even realized it was exactly a year later.