The compound eye of certain insects is a beautiful thing, as are the stars that come out at dusk and a gentle evening breeze on a hot night.
But, beautiful or not, if you’re big, and fly into my house at night and don’t stop buzzing, I’m going to swat your goddamned ass.
As a giant wasp and a giant fly learned the hard way last night.
First the wasp (and yes, I was thinking about an old BPP post by D the entire time, which I can unfortunately not locate).
- Girl: What’s that thing?
Woman: Mig! Wasp!
Wasp: Bzzzbzzzbzzz.
Man: Hrm. It’s up in the skylight, how’m I supposed to get it?
Woman: You’re the man, kill the wasp.
Wasp: Bzzbzzbzzbzz
Girl: Did you just throw my detective novel at the wasp?
Man: Relax, it’s a paperback. [Turns on lights, wasp is attracted to lights, where it narrowly misses getting swatted by flying over to a portrait of girl on wall, where it alights on her nose.]
Man: [SWAT!]
Wasp: [falls to floor, where it begins pacing angrily] Bzzfuckingbzzgoddamn.
Man: [SWAT!! SWATSWATSWAT!!!] Jesus! Die already you fucking wasp!
Wasp: [wiggles feelers]
Man: [SWAT! Picks wasp up with swatter, flushes down toilet, checks to make sure it went down and isn't going to walk up the side of the bowl and sting his ass in the middle of the night.]
Later, the fly.
- Woman: What is that?
Man: Fly.
Woman: Are you sure? It’s huge.
Man: Mmm. Big fly. [Resumes reading]
Woman: Well are you going to kill it?
Giant Fly: BZZBZZBZBZBZBZBZZZZZ!! You have to fucking catch me first!
Man: [Rolls up newspaper he is reading]
Giant Fly: Your puny newspaper does not frighten me.
Giant Fly: [Buzzing around, flies in a ballistic arc into pillow] WHAP!
Man: [SWAT!!!]
Woman: YOU SWATTED THAT ICKY FLY ON MY PILLOW?
Man: You said kill it.
Fly: BZZBzzbzz. [Shakes head groggily]
Woman: It’s STILL ALIVE ON MY PILLOW!
Man: [Flicks fly off onto floor, gives it a couple more swats, picks it up with newspaper, flushes it down toilet. After toilet has done its thing, fly is still floating there, on its back, paddling in a relaxed manner with its wings.]
Man: [Urinates on fly, flushes again.] Take that.
Woman: [Turns lights off, goes to bed] Good night.
Man: Good night.
Man: Oh, BTW, I turned your pillow over so the fly incident would be on the other side, you know.
Woman: YUCK! I turned it over too.
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)
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.
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.
I backdated a whole load of archived posts from BPP, the one you were after is now here:
http://www.acerbia.com/000724.shtml