Wasp Flavoured Toast

Maybe he was depressed? Maybe he was just tired of life?

I'm not sure if wasps have any natural predators (aside from humans protecting their jam sandwiches) but it's possible his family had been wiped out in some random act of waspicide. Maybe the exterminator left him alive to spread the warning to other wasps? A cruel act of mercy.

I've run any number of scenarios through my mind this morning, trying to answer the simple question: why? It was such a horrible way to go. So senseless. So needlessly painful.

It's not like I make toast every day. In all honesty I'm not a toasty person. But once in a while the whimper of charred bread calls to my taste buds. Sometimes only beans on toast can fill that hole in my soul.

So there I am. Like a scene from a sitcom or a kitchen appliance advert. The epitome of domestic bliss. The bread is in the toaster. The toaster is on. The filaments are heating up; they're glowing red hot. Already the mouth-watering aroma of slightly burning bread is filling the air.

Enter suicide wasp stage right, through the open back door.

There's no preamble. He heads straight for the toaster like he already has an agenda. I make an attempt to wave him back outside again; it's instinctive even though I know wasps spurn any kind of direction or air traffic control.

And then before my eyes he immediately dive-bombs into the toaster. I mean he does a genuine kamikaze straight down the side between the filaments and the bread like the Millennium Falcon entering the Death Star.

I'm gobsmacked. I feel a little bit sick. I'm so shocked I can't even turn the toaster off for a few seconds. When I do I peer in gingerly.

I'm not sure what to expect. A blackened bubble of antimatter glued to one of the filaments maybe. Or half a wasp scorched into the toast like the remains of a victim of spontaneous combustion: just his wellington boots and the pipe he used to smoke left weirdly intact.

But there is nothing. Nothing at all. Even when I take out the slices of bread the bottom of the toaster is as it always is. Full of toasted bread crumbs. No sign of a blackened thorax or a smoking mandible.

I examine the toast. That too is as it should be. No unwanted sticky matter like superheated bubble-gum adhering to the surface.

Where the hell did the wasp disappear to? Did he incinerate completely? One clean flash of light and then gone forever? His every atom seared out of existence? There wasn't even any smoke or the pop and sizzle you usually get with shop insectocuters.

I confess I didn't enjoy my beans on toast after that.

I chewed every mouthful a little bit too carefully. Just in case something crawled out of the bread and made one of the beans start to buzz...

Ants In Your Pants

Now I don’t know whether this is a national phenomenon or even a global one - maybe you good bloggers out there can inform me – but it certainly is a personally observed local one.

On the same day, at the same mysteriously appointed hour – perhaps when the soil reaches a certain temperature and the eggs hatch – every ant for miles around feels the need to boil upwards from its underground nest and swarm crazily on the surface of the human world.

And not just ordinary ants but the far superior and brutal looking flying ant too.

Basically the ordinary common-or-garden ant is just an ordinary GI Joe. Regulation uniform, hand me down rifle and one-size fits all combat training. On their own or in small numbers they’re so ineffectual as to be negligible. But when there are hundreds of them swirling over the patio like self stirring bug soup it’s time to wear industrial boots or risk the flesh being torn from your feet by a thousand clicking mandibles.

The flying ant by contrast is a force to be reckoned with on his own. Compared to the GI Joe he is a Stealth Bomber with a full payload and a bad attitude. He’s out to nobble whatever and whoever gets in his way. When you see a flying ant up close – and I’ve had one of the buggers insinuate itself into my mouth and bite the inside of my lip – you can really see the genetic connection between wasps and ants. They’re nasty, my friends, really nasty.

Anyway, yesterday, no matter where we went during the afternoon the ants were out. Darting through the air, swarming on the ground, mincing over cars, pinching their way up T-shirts and blouses and basically getting into every nook and cranny they could find. And if those nooks and crannies were human in origin all to the good. There was just no escape.

And much as I’m used to seeing this phenomenon by now (for it happens every year) it still has me scratching my head (in fact just plain scratching) and wondering: just what is the trigger? How do they all know to leave the nest at the same time – or rather how do all the nests know that this is the day to evacuate en masse? ‘Cos we drove to the next town and, just as in our garden a couple of miles away, the ants were erupting there too.

Is there some kind of insectoid Google that we humans don’t know about? Is there an arthropod graffiti network that tags small blades of grass with the date and time of the next ant rave?

When me and my family have enough trouble coordinating ourselves to get to work, school and nursery on time each morning I find this invertebrate efficiency deeply enviable.

However, it still doesn’t stop me pouring boiling water all over the little blighters.

Another cup of tea anyone?