So my friend and I are planning to sleep out in my tree fort for my birthday. That means we have to clean it out first. So today, we all went up there ("we" being my brother, my two neighbors, and I) and found a multitude of wasps. Hornets. Instant heart attack. Being the unbelievable wasp-phobic that I am, I screamed like a little kid, jumped out the trapdoor and almost died landing, then ran down the hill and across the bridge. My neighbor followed me out fast. My other neighbor and my brother ran to the balcony and slammed the door. (Yeah, my tree fort has a balcony. It's that awesome.) So me and my neighbor, the older one, went into the house to get bug spray. We weren't thinking of killing the wasps, only of getting some bug spray to my brother and younger neighbor so they could clear out of there without getting stung. Our first arrival had caught them by surprise; now they knew we were there, and they were pissed. So we found the bug spray, but we also found the area spray, the kind of spray that you douse an area with to keep bugs away. We grabbed it. First we coated ourselves in the regular bug spray. Then we went back to the tree fort. My neighbor climbed up to the balcony by standing on the lower railing, which he is just barely tall enough to do. I stood on the ground ready to douse the fort with the hose. My older neighbor began to spray the fort in quick bursts, then slamming the door shut so the wasps didn't get him. I saw patches of white spray appear on the windows, but he was just making the wasps angrier. I wanted to run away the whole time. It's dumb to mess with wasps. I would have ran away if my little brother and younger neighbor hadn't been stuck up there. (They're too small to climb over the balcony railing to get down.) Anyway, after about ten minutes of my older neighbor spraying little squirts, then slamming the door, my brother said, "Enough! Give me that." He grabbed the can. My brother, the same kid who ran screaming with me for half a mile from a bunch of bees, charged in there yelling. The windows turned white, and white mist began to seep out of the doors, window screens, and trapdoor. Even so, I could still see all the wasps dropping dead and the others fleeing the tree fort in waves. I attacked from the outside, spraying water on the tree fort, but I don't think they would have stuck around anyway. After a minute of this, my brother yelled, "Let's get out!" And they climbed through the trapdoor coughing and stinking but not stung. While they cleaned the bug poison off themselves with the hose, I took a super-soaker and cleaned the white gunk off the windows. My little brother is now my hero. Wasps:0, Humans:lost count. But it's in the thousands, I'll bet.

Yeah, it was really dumb, what we did. You don't mess with wasps. We should have just let Dad do the cleaning of the tree fort. And there's a reason people aren't supposed to put that bug poison on themselves. It's really toxic and I'm just hoping that my brother and neighbors don't get sick from that stuff. But I now respect my little brother in a whole new way.