Have I mentioned that I have a pretty severe wasp/hornet/yellowjacket phobia? I'm okay with bees, but anything else that stings makes me kind of crazy. I have been extremely careful to be normal in front of the Wooz so she wouldn't pick it up, but it must be inborn because she has it anyway.
I picked her up from school earlier this week, one of the first truly gorgeous days of the year. So my car windows were open. I buckled her up, went to reach for her stuffed Simba, and saw a nasty looking wasp creeping around just millimeters from Simba. So I froze up and weighed my options: pull her out of the car, run like mad, and hope it left sometime before dinner time so we could eventually drive home; or keep calm and carry on, figuring it would eventually fly back out since we had nothing it wanted anyway. I chose the latter.
As I pulled out of our parking spot, I said as casually as I could, "Just so you know, there is a wasp in the car. It's not going to bother us, but if it flies past you, just pretend it's not there. You don't want to swat it, okay?"
She went straight to the obvious: "Because it will sting me?!"
[deep breath] "Well, if you swat at something that stings, there is always a chance that it might try to sting you. But if you leave it alone, it will leave you alone."
"Mommy, get it out of the car!"
[another deep breath] "I wish I had a good way to do that, but I don't. We don't want to scare it or make it mad, so we're just going to leave it alone until it decides to fly away. You probably won't even see it."
(Keep in mind that all the while, I want to scram "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmyGOD there is a muthafvcing wasp in the muthafvcking car! Save me, Jeebus!")
All is quiet for about 20 seconds, and then she starts screeching at the top of her lungs.
Me: "WHAT? WHAT'S WRONG? WHAT HAPPENED?"
"OWWWWWWWIE!" [CRYING]
"DID IT STING YOU? ARE YOU HURT?"
"NO!"
"THEN WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?"
"I DON'T LIKE IT!"
So now we're both a little lightheaded and still about two miles from the house. I had to do my very best to talk us both down and basically started babbling whatever borderline comforting thing I could think of: it's more scared of you than you are of it, it knows you could squish it if you wanted to so it's going to leave you alone--but don't try to squish it! I'm just saying. Anyway, I've been stung twice and I didn't love it, but it's not the worst thing in the world. No worse than a skinned knee, definitely not as bad as when you broke your arm." Just babble, while the voice in my head screamed "Get out of the car! You can make it on foot from here! Just run and don't look back!"
We made it home in one piece, left all of the car windows and the garage open to encourage it to leave, and fled indoors. By then, it had moved to the back window, and I checked on it every 3 minutes until I didn't see it anymore. Left the windows open overnight just in case. Never heard from it again. That was DD's lead story when DH arrived home.
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