It's imprisoned now and has been moved some distance away. It will probably be dead by dawn: a necessity, I'm afraid, as these things can be quite dangerous and release 'attack pheromones' if swatted. Its repeated jabbing of its prison walls with its sting was quite a sight.
The encounter struck me as a reasonably interesting one in RPG terms: the PC (me) lost initiative in most of the initial rounds, as the hornet either charged into me or flew out of range before I could act for the first few minutes. Also, with children and others upstairs, I didn't want either to escape (and risk letting it into other parts of the house) or to try to kill it (and risk the attack hormones and the fellow frelons they might summon; I have past experience with these fiends.)
With freedom to just belt it with a newspaper, the encounter would have been considerably shorter and much less nerve-racking. And, in RPG terms, much less exciting: when your only options are to imprison or evict your foe, things get considerably more spicy.
Of course, in a game, it would have been a giant hornet. But even at conventional size, its unrelenting aggression was a reminder that not all encountered beings need a sympathetic backstory and a shot at redemption. Sometimes monsters are just monsters.
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| This nocturnal visitor was much more welcome. |
Edit: as the beast was still alive and much subdued this morning, I gave it parole over the garden wall. It hasn't returned (yet).
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