WASSSSSSPZZZZZZZZZZ

Oh! It was a gloriously hot day! The sun was beating down on the roof and the dark slate tiles were absorbing so much heat that they were turning the house into something resembling a sauna. I was trying very hard not to notice what a beautiful day it was out there, because there was much work to be done, although, luckily I don’t generally have much of a view of the glorious vistas outside which tempt me, because of where I am perched for most of my day.

But crikey! It was getting hot. Too hot! I was really going to have to flick back the blinds and open up a window just to let some air in, a bit of a breeze instead of the usual draughts which, whilst perfectly capable of reducing temperatures at home to polar levels in the wintertime seem singularly incapable of making the house even vaguely temperate during those rare baking hot summer days.

A quick click of the latch and the air was at least moving around again and I could actually consider breathing properly again instead of merely gasping and hoping. The trick is, as they say, to keep breathing.

But then, uh-oh! Wouldn’t you just know it? The window had hardly been open five minutes before there was that familiar buzzing and tapping sound as a wasp had flown in through the most miniscule of available gaps and was then, as they always seem to, finding it utterly impossible to do the same thing in the opposite direction. Because it is one of the stranger aspects of those rare hot days of an English summertime; the amount of times a wasp will come drifting in through a perfectly ordinary open window and then have a devil of a time getting out again. It’s not that they’re stupid, it’s just that their instincts take over and they head for the light which has an invisible and solid transparent sheet which goes on forever in front of it which they can’t get through.

I often wonder what they think is happening. I assume that they are thinking in whatever waspish way they do, but it must seem like a completely bizarre phenomenon to them despite being a very ordinary thing to we humans who put such things there. It makes me think of the many things we ourselves as humans really don’t understand and I wonder if that too is because we’re simply too close to the problem and aren’t able to step back far enough to understand the bigger picture.

Wasps and higher philosophy… I didn’t see that coming.

Anyway, back in my own workspace, suddenly I was all on edge. Having an angry wasp in my immediate vicinity was really no laughing matter. I instantly felt seriously distracted, and not just by those noises, but by simply knowing it was there and that it might just take a bit of a dislike to the tasty salty old human that was rather too nearby and come over to me and investigate, allowing for one of those unfortunate confluences of circumstance to occur when I either, don’t quite know where it is and inadvertently accidentally get too close and it stings me, or it just stings me because it can.

I’m not usually one to fly into a panic when there are wasps about. I see plenty of people doing that strange frenzied air dance during the summer when they’re around, but I’m generally much calmer than that around them. I’ve only ever been stung once (so far) by one of the wee beasties and that was at school during a lunchbreak when one happened to crawl right up my trouser leg (yes, long trousers) and I scratched at what I thought was an itch. The school nurse had to pull the back end of that suddenly unexpectedly halved wasp from my leg with tweezers a few minutes later, but I guess I got a better outcome of that whole incident than the wasp did.

Anyway, after waiting for this latest wasp visitor to return to the skylight and continue with its confused headbutting, I did what I usually do and, with the aid of a longish ruler, managed to persuade it through the gap and on its way. I was pretty sure another one would be along before long, but it has now become a bit of a routine, and I’d really rather not squish the little devil. After all, they are rather beautiful when you stop for a moment and really look at them, with that rather amazing black and yellow body and their amazing aerodynamic abilities, and, when all is said and done, they do have their part to play in the great scheme of things.

A few years ago we had to clear out our old shed because it was falling down and we needed to replace it. A lot of the junk got thrown away, and a fair amount of it inhabited the kitchen for longer than was deemed reasonable and some of it got put in the little greenhouse at the end of the garden. A few weeks later, when the brand spanking new shed was in position, a lot of this stuff got moved into it, including a pair of wellies that had spent those weeks in the greenhouse.

Paper engineering the natural way

Some time after that, as late summer turned into a soggy autumn, the wellies were needed and it was then that we discovered the rather beautiful paper sculpture that was a half-constructed wasps’ nest that had been under construction in that boot when we inadvertently relocated it and sealed it inside the new shed. It was truly a marvel of natural engineering, an incredibly complex, beautifully intricate, and yet amazingly delicate structure, all built from wood pulp and the hard work and spit of a swarm of creatures all working together.

I do still wonder what became of them when they flew back to that spot  where the nest and all their eggs once were to find it had suddenly just disappeared. Did they spend some considerable time trying to work out what exactly had happened or did they just, like the resilient creatures they are, just calmly start again and build another one somewhere else? I imagine that’s precisely what they did, without any fuss and bother or enquiry. I know if I’d gone to all that trouble to build a house only to get home and find it had vanished, there would be one hell of a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth going on. Maybe that’s why wasps do sometimes seem to go off and just sting someone for no apparently good reason. They’re just really annoyed about something.

Still, whatever happened that summer, I did rather find myself feeling slightly sorry for the humble creature. You might not like the much-maligned wasp, but you’ve got to admire its skill and resilience.