With my childhood friend Sam, I used to go around the neighborhood looking for wasp and hornet nests to destroy. Sam and I got in trouble, one time, for pelting a wasp nest with dirt clods. The neighbor came out, saw what we were doing, and demanded we clean up our mess. This didn't stop us from continuing to find and destroy nests wherever they might be.
Our last and greatest adventure involved a huge hornets' nest in a nearby patio; the people living in that residence had moved out, and I guess the nest could be seen as the consequence of neglect. Sam had acquired a nifty slingshot; with great accuracy, he fired his first pebble right into the nest, opening a huge hole in its side. A cloud of hornets poured out; we both screamed and ran like hell (we were only in elementary school, after all). Somehow, we ended up not getting stung; the angry hornets retreated to their damaged nest and grumbled there. I took the next shot and scored a hit; once again, a cloud of hornets erupted from the nest, and we ran away. Sam took the third shot, and by now, we knew the pattern. But in the end, it wasn't Sam's slingshot that destroyed the nest: I had the idea of making some water balloons to soak the fucker, and this proved to be way more effective, but it required us to run up a little closer to the nest to hit it accurately. The water balloons didn't make the hornets fly out in a cloud in quite the way the pebbles did, which was a plus. Eventually, the nest became so waterlogged that it simply dropped from its tucked-away position in a corner of the patio, splatting unceremoniously on the ground. Sam and I, curious, dared to peel the nest apart with sticks, looking at all the alien folds and chambers. We stamped a few random hornets, and despite what they say about how the death of a stinging insect causes it to release a death-pheromone that stirs the rest of the nest or hive into a frenzy, this didn't happen to us.
I was reminded of all this by the video below. I guess the guy is a pro exterminator, but I have to say: he really gets into his work, maybe a little too much.
It's a strangely beautiful nest, though, isn't it.
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