Comments on: The Night of the Buzzing Things that Would Not Die

By: D

Fri, 09 May 2003 17:05:53 +0000

I backdated a whole load of archived posts from BPP, the one you were after is now here: http://www.acerbia.com/000724.shtml

By: Mig

Mig — Fri, 09 May 2003 10:43:16 +0000

Hm.

We have wasps nests in our attic every year, around the size of a soccer ball, larger or smaller depending on the hotness of the summer.

Needless to say, I’m the one who gets sent to fetch things from the attic.

By: zizka

zizka — Fri, 09 May 2003 03:46:08 +0000

Well, in Taiwan I had a spider with legs as long as my fingers. Its body was smaller than the palm of my hand, however, and it had eight legs rather than just five, so I never mistook one for the other. I hoped it was eating my mouse-sized cockroaches. I also had a lizard and several ant highways.

One morning when I was just getting up I noticed a blur over by the window. I put on my glasses and found out it was a wasp dangling a caterpillar for its larva to eat, which it was putting into a mud nest hanging on my wall .

I dressed in the living room. I just didn’t want to deal with it. Oddly, since then I’ve had two similiar wasps build nests in my apartment here in the states. I’ve gotten used to it; you just wait for them to hatch and then open a window so they can leave.

A wise old woman once told me that wasps can see into the human heart, and choose to nest in places where people have in their hearts whatever it is that wasps are looking for. I’m flattered.

Evelyn Waugh once wrote of an unpleasant eccentric who moved to the country to raise wasps. That could be me, I guess.

By: Bauke

Bauke — Thu, 08 May 2003 15:54:31 +0000

How about having a "Acherontia atropos" in your room? 5 centimeters and a lot of noise. Picture: http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/LEPID3.GIF description: http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/lepid.htm#death-head (Happened to me last week..... Scary stuff)