As a young child I confess I had the bug bug. I'd collect caterpillars and watch them metamorphose into butterflies, kept worms in a wormery, spiders and beetles in old shoe boxes and I'd fish for shrimps and leeches in the nearby stream - I was a lovely kid really.
On one occasion - no more than six years old at the time - my playmates and myself observed wasps going in and out of a hole beneath a concrete garden path. Naturally, this fascinated us. We discovered if we poked a stick into the hole then one would come out to investigate and we could trap it in an old jam jar (with holes punched in - we may have been gruesome but we weren't cruel!) When they stopped responding to the twig trick, Tommy the Elder decided too go big and promptly rammed a broom handle in the hole. That worked. Boy, did that work - the whole bloody lot came out. Tommy froze but George and I ran like the clappers. Our young - little - legs were never going to out pace an angry swarm and reminiscent of a scene from some HItchcock movie they soon swarmed all over us. They were in my hair, my mouth, my socks and underpants - everywhere. I got stung so badly I was off school for about two weeks, mostly because the amount of swelling meant I couldn't even wear shoes. George was badly stung too but frozen Tommy of the brush handle escaped unscathed, not one sting did he receive.
The garden was a no-go area for days afterwards and even with all the windows and doors kept closed there was still a lot of swatting going on. Some weeks later, a man from the local council's pest control division came to inspect the 'problem'. George and I were playing outside the front of the house when he arrived and minutes later he came tearing past us, with the swarm chasing him down the street. It really was like you see in kids cartoons, with so many of them giving chase it did look like he was being followed by a black cloud. George and I had learnt our lesson and we threw ourselves against the wall, not moving till they were well away from us. And we both had 'told you so smirks' as we watched this man standing in the kitchen with his trousers round his ankles while mum flicked away with a tea towel.
At least, I think that's what she was doing!
- sparks flying from the offside silencer - when I heard zzzzzz zzzzz zzzz ........... a wasp inside my visor. [-o< I had no choice but to leave it there until I straightened up. I flipped the visor up and it flew away without stinging me.
