Thrilling Tales of Derring-Do

Dear Gus has moved his blogging enterprise to Mindsay.com (actually, quite a number of the other shipmates are there also, as well as myself). He relates there that he had a recent foray with an invasion of carpenter bees in his back garden. My daft Merrikan friend also had a close encounter of the irritable stinging insect kind and she told me the following story, which I related in a comment to Gus.



Hornets. It had to be hornets. My daft friend had an encounter with them at a house she was helping a former friend to sell.

The nest was on the front porch and after much discussion and confabulating an Action Plan was decided upon. Before leaving the house that afternoon, a step ladder, extension cords, and an industrial-size clip-on shop light were carefully and quietly set up on the front porch. Everyone went home, dreading the dark. For at 8pm, my friend and her cow-orkers returned to commit horneticide. They had purchased several cans of Hornet-B-Gon and work gloves. My friend was picked up and she, her "friend" and the "friend's" husband drove in trepidatious silence to the empty house. The husband walked slowly and quietly toward the porch, carrying two cans of canned hornet death. He positioned himself on the stepladder, within easy reach of the nest. All was darkness and quiet.

That night it was my friend's job to plug in the shoplight, which cast a bright, harsh light on the hornet's nest and its small, dark entrance hole. At the agreed signal, she plugged the light in and made sure the cords were out of the way for the man's escape. The man immediately sprayed the contents of first one, then the other can into the hole (his aim was a bit shaky). The "friend" sat in the car with the engine running.

Then a few dark wriggling hornets began staggering out of the nest and it was Time To Go. My friend unplugged the light and legged it for the car, the friend's husband right behind her yelling for his spouse to get ready to "peel." Off they went, congratulating themselves on their lucky escape.

The next day, the nest was much quieter, but there were still hornets and they had made another entrance hole to avoid the poison at the old one. So it all had to be done over again, except this time the husband was not available. It was my friend who had to stand on the ladder in the dark and her former "friend" who plugged in the lamp at her signal. After delivering the second can, they ran off to the car shrieking with laughter and slammed and locked the doors behind them before speeding away...with the windows down, which was a minor oversight, but no harm done.

This time, the nest was thoroughly soaked around both holes and the bottom, and no hornets wriggled out waggling their stingers in defiance, that night or the next day. In spite of this success, my friend decided that, like that disgraced Merrikan politico, she did not have a future in pest control.

High Tech Galleon Plunderers!

The husband of my DAFt chum reports:

Spanish police have broken up a ring of undersea looters who have spent the last two years allegedly plundering the archaeological treasures of Spanish galleons and other historic ships that sank off the coast of southern Spain.

At the weekend, the local civil guard in Cádiz announced the arrest of two Hungarian men and an American woman believed to have set up an on-deck laboratory on their ship, the Louisa, where they used hi-tech equipment - including an undersea robot worth €600,000 (£410,000) - to illegally identify, salvage and treat artifacts from the wrecks. More arrests are expected.

Good Lord! They are treasure-salvors without portfolio. Adventurers after our own hearts! I wonder if that rascal Nelson knows them?

Supply Problem Solved!

Dear Gus! has been kind enough to gift me with a gigantic beer in thanks for my support of his upcoming, or perhaps it is his outcoming book:

If you click on the book, it will benefit Gus Openshaw very much, and also a personal charity of mine a scosh.




And look at the size of this beer! No more problems of supply for me... er. I believe underbeneath the "Burps Ahoy" banner, it very possibly says "12 fl. oz." which I'm reasonably sure is Merrikish for "Not very much beer, really" or possibly "12 foolish old sotz."
Ah.

Apparently I was wearing "beer goggles" when I received this gift. Never mind.

The Beeb | Africa | US navy captures Somali 'pirates'

The US navy says it has captured a number of suspected pirates in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia.

Well done. I am pleased to report that the vessel in question was the U.S.S. Winston Churchill. This would make a certain Former Naval Person quite proud.

Whale Brittannia!

A seven-tonne whale has made its way up the Thames to central London, where it is being watched by riverside crowds.
The northern bottle-nosed whale, which is 16-18ft long and is usually found in deep sea waters, has passed Parliament and is moving upstream.

Good HEAVENS! A Whalish relation of the blubbery "B" whale!