As we struggle through the peak of summer, a new hack to deal with wasp nests is sweeping the nation. Industrious folks have discovered that if you hold a glass of gasoline over the nest, the wasps inside will be asphyxiated by the strong fumes and killed pretty much instantly. That’s only if you do it right, however, and one slightly botched example of the trend is turning an attempted extermination into an epic love story for the ages.
Clearly having seen the wasp-killing hack on TikTok, one dad gathered his wife and daughter on the porch of his house so they could witness him trying it out. As you may notice, though, the porch roof is ventilated, which means some of the fumes can escape. The result is that it takes the pair of wasps encircled in the glass a full minute to die. When they finally succumb to their mortality, the inseparable insects fall into the glass in perfect, beautiful, heartbreaking synchronicity.
And so what started out as a handy how-to hack video ended up being a tragic romance with a tear-jerking ending of Titanic and Romeo + Juliet (basically just any 1990s Leonardo DiCaprio movie) proportions. “Aw I’m so sad,” wrote one commenter, “imagine they were a couple starting their own hive and lil wasp family.” Another admitted, “I hate wasps, but my empathetic heart was thinking they’re probably saying their last goodbyes before jumping together.”
To paraphrase another classic ’90s film, you people were so preoccupied with whether or not you could gas some wasps that you didn’t stop to think if you should. R.I.P. to two young dreamers just trying to start a life together. Never was there a tale of more woe, than that of a wasp and her Romeo.