Howdy folks, Glen Blamstead here. I told a wasp to buzz off last week. Turns out he took it personally. I mean really personally. Like he went home, told his brothers, called some cousins in Wisconsin, and came back with a coordinated plan. My mistake was underestimating the interstate cooperation of the American Paper Wasp.
This all started because we had a customer coming out to the yard in Mora to walk a spot for a new pole barn. Nice fella, hauls hay, wanted a 40 by 72 for equipment and a little corner set aside for what he called "a man cave with tolerable insulation." Fair enough. That's most of what we build around here — space for the stuff you love and a corner to hide from the stuff you don't.
So I went out to the yard about a half hour early to make sure the sample truss up on the display frame still looked respectable. It's a good honest laminated wood truss, treated posts, the whole nine yards. Sherman doesn't do metal trusses and I'll die on that hill, mostly because wooden trusses don't cook you in July. Anyway, I'm walking under it and I notice a small gray blob tucked up in the peak. Football shape. Not a football. A wasp nest.
The Diplomatic Approach
Now, in a wiser life, I would have gone back to the shop, grabbed the long-handled sprayer, and handled the situation like a professional adult with health insurance. Instead I said, out loud, to the nest, "You buzz off, boys. Customer's coming."
I don't know what I expected. A reasoned response? A polite decline? Maybe a note pinned to my jacket that said "we hear you, we'll consider it." What I got was one wasp coming down out of that peak like a Blackhawk helicopter, hovering about six inches from my nose, giving me a look that in every language on earth translates to "you got something to say to me?"
I did not, in fact, have anything else to say. I backed up slow, hands where he could see them, apologized in that tone reserved for angry animals and Minnesota moms with a wooden spoon.
Reinforcements
I made it about fifteen feet before the reinforcements arrived. Three, four, then a small cloud. Somewhere in there my dignity took a personal day. I turned and did what any grown man would do — I sprinted for the shop like a fifth grader who just heard the ice cream truck. My knees have opinions about sprinting these days, and they made those opinions known for the next two mornings.
Halfway across the gravel, my boot came off. Just one. Left foot. Sailed off like it was headed for a better job. I did not stop. I ran the last thirty feet on one boot and one sock, which by then had become one boot, one sock, and a small collection of Mora parking lot particulate.
I made it inside, slammed the door, and stood there breathing like I'd just won the state fair pie eating contest. The crew was already looking up from their coffee. Denny — who has worked here approximately since the Nixon administration — took one long sip and said, "Where's your boot, Glen." Not a question. A statement. Denny doesn't ask questions. Denny narrates.
The Recovery
The customer showed up ten minutes later. I was still in one boot, trying to look casual, like people just wander around Sherman Buildings sockfooted all the time. He didn't say anything, bless him. Minnesotans have an unbelievable ability to see something ridiculous and simply choose not to acknowledge it, in the same way we choose not to acknowledge that it's fifteen below and someone's out there in cargo shorts.
We walked his site, talked ceiling height, talked doors, talked about how much of the north wall he wanted in windows. He liked the wood trusses when I explained them. Most folks do once they hear about the R-value and the fact that a Minnesota July under a metal truss feels like being slow-baked in a tin can with regrets. Wood breathes. Wood forgives. Wood does not participate in the greenhouse effect quite as enthusiastically.
By the time we shook hands and he headed for his truck, the wasps had gone quiet up in the display peak. Not gone. Just quiet. The way a wasp is quiet is not the way a chicken is quiet. A chicken quiet means the chicken is asleep. A wasp quiet means the wasp is thinking.
Denny Retrieves The Boot
Denny walked out about an hour later with the long sprayer and a mostly patient expression. Handled it in about ninety seconds. He came back in with my boot in one hand, held out at arm's length like it had betrayed him personally, and set it on the counter.
"You gonna talk to any more bugs today, Glen," he said. Statement, again.
I told him no. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe I'd take a whole week off from bug diplomacy and just build barns like a normal person. He grunted, which in Denny is roughly equivalent to a standing ovation, and went back to his coffee.
The Moral
There isn't really a moral to this one. Or maybe there is: some things in life you can talk your way out of, and some things you cannot. Wasps in a truss peak fall in the second category.
If you're building a pole barn in Mora or anywhere else in Kanabec County this summer, we'd love to walk your site. We promise the wasps are usually only there in the display model, and we promise Denny will bring the sprayer, not me. Stop by Sherman Buildings or holler at us — we'll bring the coffee, and I'll leave the wildlife negotiations to the professionals.
Glen out. Watch your peaks.
