Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Nest!

So, we have had this hornet's nest in one of our pastures for quite sometime now and everyone at Roads En Farm (two legged and four legged) has managed to steer clear of it's inhabitants ever since we noticed it back in the spring. Seriously, the thing was bigger around than a basketball, so we have all made conscientious efforts to steer clear of THE NEST. Over the past few weeks, we started to notice that there wasn't any activity going on around THE NEST AT ALL. Sunday almost simultaneously (we are that much alike, its scary) Chris and I decided that it would be a great idea for us to take it down and donate it to Hudson's school.


Needless to say, Chris and I had a stunning moment in redneck engineering. I'm going to go ahead and apologize right now because I don't have any pictures of our glorious "nest gettin down rigup". I was able to sneak in a pic of THE NEST before removal, but that was it. So here it is...



You can't tell from this picture, but the nest was actually a good 15-20 feet in the air.


Just in case anyone ever wants to get down a large hornet's nest, I have compiled a few *need to know* tidbits for future references:

Materials Needed
* 1 Pickup Truck
* 1 Really Tall Ladder
* 1 Handsaw
* 1 Handy-Dandy Husband
* 1 Handy-Dandy Wife


Directions
* Have Handy-Dandy Wife help Handy-Dandy Husband gather necessary materials
* Have Handy-Dandy Husband drive and align bed of truck under desired removal spot
* Have Handy-Dandy Husband set up the really tall ladder and stand on it with saw. If the ladder doesn't work for all of the job, the top of the truck cab works well also.
* Have Handy-Dandy Wife be ready for whatever Handy-Dandy Husband needs and await anxiously until removal of nest is complete. **Note to Handy-Dandy Wives...Don't try to take pics for your blog while Handy-Dandy Husband is on ladder sawing down nest/limbs. He needs your utmost attention while doing something so crazy, i mean tedious.**

Anyhoo, the nest made it out of the tree safely and was hornet-free MUCH to our delight (hornet and wasp colonies die out every year, thank goodness). After spending two nights in our Dutch Barn, it made it to school yesterday morning...You would not believe some of the looks that Hudson and I got from other kids while walking in with it. LOL. Probably not as entertaining as the looks we would have gotten while getting the nest out of the tree though....