Lynyrd Skynyrd – A Nest Full Of Wasps

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Ronnie Van Zant

One afternoon, Ronnie Van Zant and I were coming across the creek next door to his property when a  wasp “buzzed” us. I swatted at the wasp two or three times with my fishing rod, but it just kept on. Ronnie said, “I’ve had enough of this,” and he ran into the house and got his shotgun. I passed him on his way back out as I stepped up on the patio to ask Judy for some tea. I heard him fire a couple of times so I walked outside with my tea and asked him, “What are you shooting at?” He said, “That damn wasp nest up in the tree.” I looked up in the tree and there, about forty or fifty feet up a tall pine tree, was a nest of wasps as big as a basketball. He shot at the nest again which was swarming with wasps, but missed. I said, “If you want to knock it down, hit the limb right above the nest and it will fall down.”  I wasn’t expecting him to knock it down on the first shot, but he did. When I looked back, the nest was right in front of us. I started running because there were ten thousand wasps going crazy. Ronnie started running too, but in the same direction as I was. We ran, bumping and pushing into each other, for our lives, trying to get away from the wasps. He almost pushed me into the pool. There were wasps buzzing all over the place, but we finally made it into the house. I said, “Damn, you could have given me time to get into the house.” He said, “I wasn’t even thinking about that thing falling in front of me.”

We gave the wasps about thirty minutes to leave and then we went out to look the nest over. There must have been fifty thousand baby wasps in the larva stage in the nest. We tore the nest apart and fed the eggs to the bream in the creek.

Thanks,
Gene

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