(The photograph is of Paper Wasps at my front door! No, I didn’t leave them there! But look how organized they are – soldiers, guards, collectors, builders… !)
Garrett was eleven years old. He liked spiders and bugs and stuff. Goodness knows how many insects had perished as he kept them as pets trying to work out the parameters. What do they eat? Where do they live? Under what conditions do they thrive? So far, he had had little luck in keeping insects as pets; except for tarantulas, and with eight legs and not six they were better off being called spiders. Besides, how to keep a pet tarantula was well documented. Also ants. He had an ants’ nest behind glass and he fed them bread soaked in sugared water. They seemed to thrive.
Of course, he also cared for monarch butterfly caterpillars. He knew what they fed on, but for the last couple of years he’d grown a little tired of them. They were so commonplace. No! What he wanted was to keep scorpions, and bumblebees, and grasshoppers, and wasps, and… different things.
As luck would have it, once he visited the insect department of the local museum at the same time as a visiting entomologist. Professor Marinko Magyar was one of the country’s leading experts. He specialized in native species of bees, but he knew an awful lot about other sorts of insects. Garrett told him of the difficulty he had in keeping insects as pets.
The professor could not have been more helpful. In fact, he was so delighted that a young person was enraptured by insects that he offered to help Garrett set up a bumblebee’s nest. It was wonderful! Under a removable wooden lid, the bees were behind glass so everything could be observed. A polythene pipe opened to the outside world where the bumble bees could freely come and go to collect pollen and whatever it was they collected. It was a lot of work setting it up, but the professor enjoyed helping the young lad who had shown such interest.
Next, the professor showed Garrett how to successfully keep crickets. The particular species they cared for required rain before they would lay eggs, so a water spray bottle was kept handy. Fortunately, Garrett’s wonderful and expanding “insect zoo” was in a large spare building apart from the house, so there was plenty of room to expand; and far enough away for Garrett’s mother to avoid having to come near “the horrible things”.
Over the next couple of years, with the help of the professor, different species of insects were added to the collection. Garrett and the professor spent hours working with the little creatures. The collection was going to become famous! It all finished, however, a couple of years ago. Now that he’s older, Garrett is taking the professor to court.
How did you relocate those wasps? They are fantastic insects, but kind of scary.
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Fly spray!
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Of course. What else could I expect from the Master of Crime Fiction and Reality?
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Why…?
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Because there’s one person in my household if stung just the once will die! I hope you think that’s good enough to destroy the wasp nest at the front door!!
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You clearly don’t like chicken drumsticks.
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Yes, that was it.
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Did the professor inappropriately touch him or the insects escape and kill his mother? Or better still, perhaps that is what’s left for us to ponder.
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That’s for you to decide!!
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I was afraid you were going to say that. hehe
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There’s a renowned bug zoo in Victoria. I visited more often than I cared to when my Boy was little.
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I visited the Washington DC Insect Zoo at tarantula feeding time. They had about 30 tarantulas and only one got fed each day.
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Shudder!
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Oh dear. I am not particularly bothered by creepy crawlies most of the time. Still, I was awfully distracted from the story by the fairly disturbing picture of your wasps. But not quite distracted enough to miss the even more disturbing ending.
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The summer I took this photo there must have been 20 wasps nests on the property. I would take the fly spray before sunrise and use it!
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That was such a disappointment! I had been expecting the professor to be housed in a suitable abode next to locusts. My little sister and I were once attacked by a squadron of wasps while we were gathering berries. It grounded us both for about a fortnight, but I waited patiently. After the requisite recuperation, I planned a revenge. I soaked a jute bag with kerosene and put it at the end of a long stick. All I needed then was a matchbox. You know the rest, of course.
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!!! BANG ! If the wasp nest is a hole in the ground I pour petroleum in it (in the early morning before the wasps start to exit) and block their entrance with a petrol soaked rag. It works every time. The paper wasps are a different thing altogether. Their nest is like a hornets.
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Those wasps are scary – they look like the burrowing kind and they are deadly stingers.
As for the professor, I’m assuming he was a hands-on teacher which is why he is being sued!
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In fact these wasps build “smallish” paper looking bombs on French posts and the like – usually no bigger than a computer mouse! They are an Asian variety apparently and “recently” came into NZ where they spread like wildfire.
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I assume they sting?
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Yes! They sting!! But they also don’t seem to get as angry as the bigger (what we call) the German wasp.
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