A Swarm of Wasps

A Swarm of Wasps

By

Paul R. Meredith

It was a very warm summer in 1972 when a former brother-in-law of mine asked me to loan him a hundred dollars. He wanted to purchase a beat-up old snark sailboat that he discovered in the paper for $200. I went with him to check it out, and what I thought was an absolute piece of junk, he thought was a treasure he couldn’t live without. So we pooled our resources to give the man his price, which also included the trailer onto which the wreck of a boat was strapped.

            My then brother-in-law, who I will call Chuck, was a Decatur, Illinois city police officer. I had only known him a year or so, but he was a really great guy. Once we had the boat, he suggested we pull it down to Lake Decatur and launch it for a trial run. My car had the trailer hitch, so it became my responsibility to haul the boat to the launch ramp near the city marina on the lake. Chuck followed me in his car, watching carefully to see if anything fell off during the short trip.

            At the ramp, he talked to one of the marina officials he knew to see if it would be permissible to launch the boat, even though we didn’t have it licensed or registered yet. The man gave nodding approval, so we prepared everything to make the launch. He made sure to include the six-pack of Budweiser he brought along.

            I backed the boat trailer carefully up to the ramp and neared the water. I stopped the car and asked Chuck, “Don’t you think we ought to raise the sail first to make sure it works?”

            “No, we do that after we’re in the water. The wind could blow it over before we get into the water. It will be okay,” he assured.

            About that time I noticed two wasps flying around the bow of the boat as I unhooked the straps holding the boat to the trailer. Then I saw a few more wasps. Then I saw there was a very large wasp nest under the very point of the bow inside the boat. I ran a few steps away, not wanting to get stung by the wasps. “Damn, they are getting mad at us for disturbing their home,” I announced.

            Chuck also stepped back. “I know what,” he said, “I’ve got some Mace in the car. That should kill them.” He ran to his car in which he had followed me in to the lake and brought back his container of Mace. He sprayed the hell out of that wasp nest, deeply angering hundreds of the flying insects. They roared out of the mud nest and flew straight downwind from us as we stood and watched. A few seconds later there wasn’t a single wasp near the boat. Then suddenly we heard a loud shriek from a lady walking her dog down the way a hundred feet or so, and then we heard several more screams of panic from a group of people holding a picnic on a hillside nearby. The officer at the marina ran out to see what the screams were, and then he yelled, “Son of a bitch,” as he swatted several wasps from his body. One or more of the insects had just stung him. He ran back inside the building to protect himself, cursing loudly as he went.

            Chuck and I were never sure how many screams we heard that day, but we heard them from people as far away as at least a city block—maybe much longer. Oddly enough, nobody ever knew where the wasps came from. When Chuck sprayed the wasp nest, he was on the opposite side of the bow of the boat from the marina office and shielded from the view of the people inside the office. There were no other people standing watching us attempt the launch.

            Once the excitement settled down and we saw no other wasps in the area, we decided to go ahead and launch. I backed the car and trailer into the water so the boat floated free as Chuck held firmly to the rope. I then parked the car and trailer in the parking lot and quickly returned to the boat. I got in the boat while Chuck shoved us off. There was no motor power on the boat, so we paddled out a hundred yards or so toward the middle of the lake. We saw there was a slight breeze, so we decided to raise the sail. I untied the securing ropes and rotated the mast so Chuck could raise the sail. He hoisted it up to the top and tied the rope to secure it in place. I noticed there were many holes in the sail, some very large ones. It seemed pretty much rotten to me as fragments from the sail floated in the breeze.

            Just as Chuck finished tying the rope to keep the sail up, a slight crosswind caught the sail and the boat immediately flipped over, dumping both of us in the water. I hoped we wouldn’t drown. I tried to swim over towards Chuck and hold on to the edge of the boat, but as I tried, I inadvertently lowered my legs. I felt the soft mud of the lake bottom squeezing between my toes. “Hey Chuck, it is real shallow here. I can reach the bottom.”

            Chuck was struggling trying to keep his hold on the boat. He responded, “Yeah, I feel it too.” Then he disappeared beneath the water. Frantically, I tried to see if I could feel him with my now free hands. Suddenly he popped back up, sputtering.

            “Are you okay?” I asked.

            “Hell yes, but I can’t find the beer.” He had been diving to find his six-pack of Bud. He went back under five or six times, finally coming up with his precious beer. Suddenly as he held it up, the packaging gave way from being soaked with water and all six cans fell back in the dirty water. I tried to help Chuck find the beer, but after becoming totally exhausted, we had only been able to locate three cans.

            We noticed the boat slowly drifting into deeper water, so I told Chuck, “We had better hang on to the boat and walk it toward shore before we lose it altogether.” He stuck two of the cans of beer in his pockets and popped the top on the other and started drinking it. He pulled and pushed with one hand while I labored with all my strength. It was difficult because I kept sinking into the muddy bottom halfway to my knees, as he did also, but he kept drinking his beer.

            We eventually got the boat close enough to the launch area to see what we could do about getting it out of the water. The big problem was the mast had broken off when the boat capsized and it was hanging loose in the water. Chuck made the decision to cut the ropes that were holding it to the boat, which he did. Then we hoisted the two pieces up on the grass. A couple of guys helped us turn the boat right side up so it would partially float again, after which we started bailing out a lot of water with whatever we could find. I used a minnow bucket and Chuck had a can of some kind.

            At some point I told him, “Let me dry off a little and I’ll go get the trailer and maybe we can float the boat onto it.” It was so hot that wringing out my shirt and the legs of my shorts offered little help. I was sweating so bad the water continued to come to soak me from head to toe. I went to get the car and the trailer and started backing it into the water to retrieve the boat.

Finally, after some slippage of the tires on the wet dock, with help from the other two men helping push, we were able to slowly pull the boat out a foot or so at a time, letting the water drain as we did. It took a long time before we had the boat back on level ground, still draining water from the drain plug. It was very heavy, being completely waterlogged. I hoped I wasn’t hurting the car in any way, but it seemed to be alright. 

I was still trying to dry out standing by the care when I noticed the wasp nest was still partially in place under the bow of the boat. I dislodged it with the oar and tossed it out in the parking lot. It broke apart completely. Apparently that part of the bow was never completely submerged when the boat tipped over in the lake.

The marina officer saw the action from his window and ran out to see what I just did. He looked down and saw the remains of the wasp nest broken on the asphalt. “Chuck, you bastard, you were the one that created that mess, weren’t you?” I noticed he had two bad sting marks, one on his arm and one on his cheek.

“I didn’t cause it,” Chuck said. “We just squirted the nest with Mace. Apparently the wasps didn’t like it too much though.”

“Damn you anyway, we’ll probably get sued if those people ever find out where those wasps came from,” the officer said.

“Better not tell them then,” Chuck said, laughing as did.

We pulled the wrecked boat back to Chuck’s house and left it.

A short time later Chuck died from unexpected causes. His ex-wife came from Oklahoma with her family and attended his very large public funeral services. It was amazing how many cops from all over that part of Illinois came to honor Chuck for his police work. His funeral was the largest I had ever seen.

For whatever reason, Chuck’s ex-wife talked her current husband into buying and pulling the boat back to their home in Oklahoma. I never heard whether they made it all the way home before the boat totally disintegrated. The wood was so rotten it surely fell apart on the highway.

The End

Circa 1972