Carpenter bees and hornets

Spring advances. So many nice blossoms and flowers and everything is green. And the pollen is unbelievable. There is a fine yellow dusting of it on everything. Including the lining of my lungs. Allergics are in misery.

And here come the bugs. I almost forgot about them. The ants, the flies, the mosquitos, the beetles, the cockroaches. Our first arrivals are the carpenter bees. Think of a bumblebee then triple its size and there you have it. Georgie calls them 'wood bees'. They are digging holes in our mail box post. They leave little piles of sawdust beneath their tunnels. Their legs dangle straight down as they cruise slowly about. They often hover right in front of you, and look at you with those rediculous legs hanging down. This doesn't bother me now that I know they can't sting. I learned that fact from Georgie. She is a great source of information actually. For example, she knows all about ants. She freaked out on our walk from school yesterday. "OH NO! A FIRE ANT!" I asked how she even knew what one was and she replied, "Because it's RED!" and ran down the path. She told me they are called fire ants because when they bite you "IT FEELS LIKE FIRE!" I calmed her down about the ant but then a big hornet buzzed around her and renewed her panic. These hornets are rusty orange in colour. One was on our car's side view mirror and Gudrun was trying to get a good photo of it. Until it almost flew in the car. One got in the car later in the day. Gudrun got out of the car in a hurry and I whacked it repeatedly with a map of Georgia and Alabama until he was dead. I used the Alabama side of course. Gudrun has since instituted a 'windows up' policy. The AC is on all the time since winter has given way directly to summer.