Learning Experiences

A Cautionary Critter Tale

Many things can happen to a parked aircraft. If nothing else, sunshine will oxidize the paint, and rain will leak into areas where it is not intended - or wanted - and accelerate corrosion. Birds and other critters will nest in the cowl (or anywhere else that they can) and generally make a mess of your pride and joy.

Zero-Two-Eight had been sitting in a grass tiedown for almost a year before I bought her. Her former home field was the sort of pleasant Midwest small airport that harks back to Huffman Prairie in its rustic hospitality for small aircraft. The grass was deep and green; the nearby corn was tall and healthy, and all was peaceful. Then I came along and got things stirred up.

Zero-Two-Eight had not been flown much besides a test flight and a ferry flight to her new home. After arrival, it seemed to me that the only time she flew was when the mechanic decided that he'd fixed everything that was wrong and needed to fly her for a few minutes to find new problems to work on. I had begun to harbor dark suspicions about my loyal bender-of-wrenches until I dropped by unannounced one night after work.

Spring was upon us, and the day was unusually warm. The mechanic and I had been talking quietly in the office for a few moments. Not wanting to waste the electricity to light the entire hangar, we were using flashlights when we went in. John suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and whispered, "Look at that."

In the dim light I watched a furtive blur of fur scamper across the floor dragging a tuft of grass. The little homesteader was heading straight for the left main of Zero-Two-Eight. The mouse climbed up the brake line into the strut, dragging its new bedding with it. I was less than impressed with this; mice foul their nests, and mouse urine will corrode aircraft faster than money can change a congressman's vote.

"Now what do we do?" I asked, demonstrating my usual encyclopedic knowledge and decisiveness.

"Easy, watch this," responded the bender-of-wrenches. With that, he strolled up to the plane and started to tap vigorously on the strut and lower hull with his fists. After a moment he stopped and motioned me over to the airplane. "Listen."

I bent down and put my ear against the lower fuselage just below the door. I could hear faint squeaks and a high-pitched buzz.

"Look!"

A yellow jacket had emerged from the same hole that the little varmint had entered moments before. The mechanic pointed to the window; the cabin was alive with flying yellow jackets. The mouse burst from within the strut, running madly with several wasps in hot pursuit. We beat a hasty retreat for the office.

"I spotted the wasp nest yesterday, but I didn't have any insecticide. I'm kinda glad I didn't. This way we used 'em to get the mouse out of the plane."

"Pretty cool - natural pest control," I observed. "I wonder if I'll have more trouble with the mouse after the wasp nest is removed."

"Probably not. You'll be out of the hangar, and we're going to have the exterminator come by and get rid of the mousies, but that's not all I found." The bender-of-wrenches was grinning wickedly.

"Do tell, Professor, what else did you find?"

"You know what a mud-dauber wasp is?"

"Yeah, it's one of the solitary wasps that makes a nest for its eggs out of mud?" I ventured.

"Yep. Well, you gotta regular condo in there. I think there's probably 20 pounds of mud just in the landing gear struts, and you got lots more in the wings."

The next day, proving that he loved aircraft more than his own well-being, the mechanic donned heavy rain gear and gloves, scarf, hat, and goggles to do hand-to-stinger combat with the invading yellow jackets. You gotta love a guy like that. Very few people willingly tackle a job on the short end of 250-to-1 odds, even when armed with three aerosol cans of insecticide. When you figure what he nets after taxes, well, you can't accuse him of being a mercenary.

Coward that I am, I didn't visit the airport until the next evening. Bender-of-wrenches gestured at the trash can. "There's your late tenants." The bottom of the 55-gallon drum was solidly covered with dead and twitching yellow jackets. A shopping bag stood next to the trash can. Neatly stacked in the bag, looking something like servings of mud lasagna, were lumps of mud-dauber wasp nests. The wasps had built their little mud tubes side by side and layer upon layer inside the strut. The development had sprawled upward into the lower fuselage.

Peeking down into the starboard strut, I could see another once-thriving community had been pushing its way up from the axle toward the cabin. The wheel pants also were loaded up.

Later when the wings were removed, we rigged up an 18-foot piece of plastic pipe to the shop vacuum. Using a flashlight and bashing the end of the tubing into the insect nurseries, many pounds of mud, eggs, mud, larvae, dried mud, unhatched wasps, and what could only be described as insect afterbirth mixed with mud were sucked out of the wings. The score, when we finally called it a day, was approximately 66 pounds, allowing a pound for all the yellow jackets and their paper nest.

I was fortunate that the discovery was made on the ground and not in the air. Unfortunately, aircraft performance was not noticeably improved by their removal.