We’ve Captured Our First Murder Hornet And Now Have 2 Months To Destroy Them Before Mating Season

Let’s start with the good news: we captured a murder hornet. Frankly, I’m surprised we hadn’t caught one yet. You’d think that it would be easy to track down an insect that puts entire neighborhoods in shade. I’m guessing some scientist went out with a lasso and managed to rope its leg and bring it down like a kite. Once it was on the ground, maybe she/he covered it with a duvet or one of those weighted, fire-retardant blankets and had her/his family stand on the corners. Then they funneled in chimney smoke through a garden hose, causing the pterodactyl hornet to get high as hell and relax, and now they have it in a dog cage? Nice work, squad.

The bad news: we now have less than two months to find the rest of them and wipe them off the face of the earth before they reproduce.

Now, Washington officials are racing against the clock to find the rest of the hornets and eradicate them from the state before the hornets start to reproduce. Around mid-September, the queens will mate with male hornets and start reproducing new queens and workers, the department said. 

Officials are now using infrared cameras and placing additional traps to catch live hornets. They then plan to tag the hornets and track them back to their colony so that the entire colony can be destroyed. 

Two months, gotta catch ’em all. Doesn’t really seem likely. These things have been in the news since the start of Rona, and we just caught our first one in some sort of bottle trap? Can’t say I’m looking forward to watching these things multiply and migrate in V formation. It’s not as though we needed another reason to stay inside.

Here’s to the fall of the murder hornets. And I think I mean their downfall. Could also be the autumn of the murder hornets, if we’re not careful.