The Red Paper Wasp

Yesterday while I was sitting in the living room, I witnessed a wasp fly down out of the fireplace and towards the giant picture window in the living room.  I was not pleased about sharing the living room with the wasp, and after considering burning down the house in order to kill it with fire, I elected to simply leave the little bastard alone.

And so, this morning, the wasp was still hanging out by the window.  And Lex had figured out how to handle it.

He put on his protective gear, and then made a plan to trap the wasp under a cup on the windowsill.  He asked me to record the wasp-trapping operation, and so now I am pleased to present that video here:

After the wasp was safely trapped under the cup, we recorded some footage of the wasp's behavior, and we did a little research to find out exactly what kind of wasp we had under the cup.

We discovered that we had a red paper wasp, and according to a pain scale we found, it has a pretty bad sting.  It's a level 4 sting, with only a level 5 sting being worse.  For comparison, bullet ants and tarantula wasps are level 5.  Also, it will cause pain that lasts for 5 to 10 minutes.  Lex got stung by one of these by the front door about a month (or two?) ago, and he ran screaming down the street for about 5 minutes before I could settle him down enough not to cause a riot and panic with all the neighbors, so I believe it is a pretty bad sting.

And so, Lex got his revenge on the red paper wasp.