halfway done: the wasp trap

my carport is full of wasps. i was content to live and let live as long as the were building paper nests in the far corners away from my door in places several feet above my head.
and i don't even mind mud daubers that much because they aren't aggressive but they started building on my doorframe. um... not cool. they tend to fly in the house every time i open the kitchen door. this ends badly with wasps in my sleep, cats chasing wasps and the dog snapping at them. and the inevitable finding of wasps dead in weird places.

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/bmuddaub.html







so i thought about wasp traps. there's all kinds of exciting ways to make them if you don't want to buy them

a lot of the ways to make them involve soda bottles [just search instructables.] so last time i finished a bottle of seltzer water i saved the bottle. and then i thought about all the taping and gluing and potential leaking... and realized i'm just too lazy to mess with all that. or getting a second bottle which most of the instructions call for. i make my own seltzer usually so i only generate a few soda bottles a year.


i was standing there looking at my soda bottle and realized if the neck was just inside out it would work. a plastic two liter is pretty flexible. it's summer, my hands don't have much strength right now. but darned if it didn't work. grab the neck of the bottle [don't flatten your palm over the top, air pressure will make it harder] and smush.



voila! add a little sugar water, carefully and slowly invert... and now i just need to figure out how to hang it.



there's a really good chance i'm not going to build a hanger for it and instead just duct tape it to the wall in the carport.
i'll let you know how that works out.