After I wrote that I had been viciously attacked by yellow jackets while innocently spraying their secret hideout with some toxic spray, a number of readers have advised me there are several ways to get rid of those pesky critters.

They suggested things like putting a sheet of Bounce on the ground or wearing some in your shirt pocket. Yellowjackets and hornets hate it and would rather swim the English Channel than chase you with Bounce on you. I tried this.

But the buzz from the survivors swarming around my head was "nice try, sucker."

Someone else suggested I buy a sirloin steak and hang it by a string over a pan of water. Yellowjackets are meat eaters and will gorge themselves till they are too full to fly. Then they fall into the water and drown.

At the price of sirloin, I would rather eat the steak and fall into the water myself.

Since the first incident, I have avoided irritating the flying demons but I know where they live and walk by their underground lair every morning on my way to get the paper. I am sure they either have a sentry or can hear my footsteps.

It could be my own fault. I have a set of chimes and every morning I ring the chimes to say hello to the world. This may be an alarm clock.

As I tippytoe past their hole in the ground each day, three or four come out to investigate. One or two even do a flyby of my nose just to warn me they have not forgotten their fallen comrades from last week's sortie, when I got stung four times on my warty bare legs

I can't keep living this way, waiting for them to gang up on me. Notwithstanding all the advice I have had from readers, my plan for fighting these marauders is simple.

First, I will wear long pants. Yellow jackets prefer guys in Bermuda shorts. I will thwart the most determined ones by tucking my pant legs into my socks.

I will wear gloves, a towel around my neck and a Groucho Marx mask. The mask is a must to protect me from retaliation by relatives who may have my picture pasted on the wall of their hive.

The nest where they lurk lies beside a railroad tie that has been there for 26 years. It must be uprooted and lord knows how many thousand furious meat-eaters bearing weapons of man's destruction will come bursting out when I uproot their underground hideout.

It is going to be interesting.

I do not go into this battle lightly. I was talking about this to Hank Bakken, who was a flyer himself. In WW2, while stationed in France.

He understands hornets and wasps. When he ate lunch near the airfield, the yellow jackets swarmed over his field rations and he had to hide his food under paper plates.

Of course, I could hire some other expert in the bug field (Hank declined my offer of a job) but I have a personal score to settle. Last time when they got me on my bare leg, it throbbed all night.

I should have won a purple leg medal.