On August 10, 2023, PCS students and faculty came ready to start the new school year, only to find a swarm of wasps terrorizing the campus.  Since the beginning of this semester, these wasps have been disturbing students during lunch, eating leftover food scraps, and making the trash cans their home.  This is by far the worst case PCS has seen, and the community is looking for both answers and solutions to this dilemma.

So where are the wasps coming from?  Are they on campus, or have they made their nest off site?  Although no one knows exactly where these itty bitty beasts are coming from, school custodian Dan Hogan suspects that the wasp nest may be off-site: “I’ve searched the whole school and haven’t seen a nest-.”He explained that wasps can build their nests anywhere from the branches of trees and bushes to under the ground, making locating them an even greater difficulty.

But where these wasps are coming from is not the only reason this conundrum is so concerning. Being stung by these hostile creatures is also a major worry being kept in mind. Does it hurt?  How long does the pain linger? These are just some of the questions students have about this topic.  Eighth grader Stella Bloom, who was stung by one of these aggressive critters during lunch stated that “it doesn’t hurt as bad as everyone thinks it does, but the pain lingers for a long time.”

If we don’t want to get stung, if we don’t want to deal with this issue, if we want these wasps to disappear, we must do our part in preventing the infestation from getting worse.  Mr. Hogan suggests that students “try to be clean and keep litter and spills to a minimum.”  If we limit the amount of spills and litter on campus, the wasps are less likely to come after everyone’s food.  If everyone does their part, we can limit the severity of this complication.  Let’s all work together to prevent this, and get rid of the wasps for good.