Once upon a time, a time not so long ago, we had a tree by the side of our driveway that had gorgeous thick, yellow leaves. And then those leaves started to fall and revealed a terrifying sight.

I present to you a massive hornet’s nest.

I took these pictures right after Saturday’s football game, but we had been aware of the nest for at least a week. We mostly worried if the inhabitants were still alive, what would happened if we knocked it down, were either of us allergic to hornets. I even showed it to a maintenance man who came to do a winter inspection of our house. He took one look at it, shook his head and just said “sorry. nope. not touching it.”  A few people told us to wait for a hard freeze, which had already happened a few times, but we decided to wait until the first big snow…just in case.

After yesterday’s storm, all the remaining leaves were gone and the nest was just staring us down from its perch and since another storm was on its way, we knew we had to act quickly.

Here’s my knight in multiple-layer armor, realizing the nest’s exterior was too delicate to knock down with a broom. (It had a thick tree limb going through it as support.)

But our loppers did the trick.

With one quick snip the nest was on the ground and then we waited.

We watched this opening for a good minute to see if anything would happen. It was at this moment that I realized we forgot to bring out the bug spray….#YOLO!

Because I was dying to know what was inside, Joe got a broken branch and began to tear into the nest. And I did what anyone in my situation would do. I started making a quiet buzzing noise. He jumped back, said some things I’m pretty sure we vowed never to say to each other and stormed inside, all over my hysterical laughter. But he was back in less than a minute.

Good news! The hornets were all dead! Bad News! You are probably going to get chills and have to scratch your head while looking at these pics. They make my skin crawl just looking at them! Seriously, I look like a meth addict. Can’t. Stop. Scratching.

Fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, mostly disgusting, but a little fascinating. I wonder how long it took them to build it?

So, there you go. That’s the real story of The Girl (& Boy) Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, minus the tattoos, violence and actual kicking.