Necessity is the mother of invention, as someone famous and ancient once said, and Plato would be right in the case of a convenience store clerk faced with a would-be robber. She says she didn’t know if the woman demanding money from the register was armed, but darned if she wasn’t going to arm herself… with a can of bug killer.

With limited options, the Pennsylvania clerk says she chose Raid wasp and bee killer after a woman dressed all in black with a mask over her face walked into the store late Sunday night.

“That’s a heads up anyway,” she deadpanned to WJACTV.com about the mask. “Then she throws this black bag on the counter and tells me, ‘Put the money in the bag,’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ So she says it again and I’m like, ‘Excuse me?'”

That’s when she grabbed the can of bug spray and waited, giving the woman a chance to leave, as seen in the surveillance footage. After she stayed put, PFFFFFFFT out comes a spray of insecticide, shooting the suspect right in the face.

“She just stood there and then started walking out the door and I kept spraying her as she was walking,” the clerk said.

Although authorities warn others in similar circumstances not to confront someone who could be armed, the clerk says that’s the very reason she reached for the only weapon she could find.

“When she pulled her hands back towards herself, I didn’t know if she had anything on her and I wasn’t letting her get to it first,” she explained. “I just got mad. I’ve got better thing to do with my night than that.”

She described the woman as having a deep voice, with long brown hair and thick eyebrows, and someone who will definitely be avoiding Raid for a while.

Stinging surprise: Would-be robber thwarted with bug spray [WJACTV.com]

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