Spiders at Night and Stripping for Wasps

 

I hate bugs.

 

The fat executioner guy in The Mummy says he hates bugs and then gets eaten by scarab beetles, so I suppose I should use caution when making that declaration, but they’re currently on my mind because I just saw the biggest spider on my wall, and then it disappeared.

 

Talk about the hallmark for a great night’s sleep. I’m thankfully too tired to be concerned beyond general unease, but part of me wants to throw up. What had happened was, I heard this noise while facebook surfing and looked to see why my lamp was tapping, and there was a giant spider crawling (I originally typed “growling.” Do you think that’s a weird Freudian typo?) above my nightstand. I looked for something with which to smash it, and as I did this, I simultaneously watched the spider side-skitter down the wall behind my bed and literally vanish. It’s not on the floor; it’s not on the wall; I don’t see it under my bed. WHERE DID IT GO?

 

I learned an important lesson about the wrong way to kill a spider this summer, and that is to not swing a shoe at them and miss. (The impact of the shoe against the wall causes them to fall off and also vanish.)

 

I’ve killed two spiders in my bedroom since I’ve been here, one of which was actually IN MY BED. I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. These are not thin spiders or tiny spiders; these are large, furry creatures that may, in fact, actually growl. I think this is what they are:

 

But the others I killed. They did not disappear. Ughhhh

 

Continuing with A Bug’s Life, today at lunch, I was harassed by wasps.

 

Photographer Jason and I went to a café called Vudu, and I contemplated (with earnestness) foregoing an actual lunch and just eating raspberry chocolate bars and hot chocolate, since it would cost the same amount. But I didn’t; I got a tomato, chicken, and something-else-that-tasted-sweet pie—pie, as in a meat pie, and not that thing you put fruit in and serve after dinner la mode.

 

I’ve never had a non-dessert pie before, so this was exciting for me. Some people—myself, under normal circumstances—might argue a dessert pie would be more exciting, but I’m all about food I haven’t tried before.

 

[NOTE: Fergburger blog to come]

 

Anywho, it was a fairly nice day, so we decided to sit outside. Within minutes of the food arriving, a wasp started hovering around me and my food. In tennis, the kids nicknamed me “Jenny Bee” because there was a bee that would fly only around me; similarly, the wasp flew only around me. I wonder if I’m like that Peanuts character with the dust cloud around him—do I have a cloud of insect lure radiating from my body? COME ON.

 

The wasp landed on my pie—my poor, wonderful, beautiful pie—and Jason cut it in half with a knife (the wasp, not my pie, though the wasp was on top of my pie). It was really gross, but I still ate the pie as if nothing happened, sort of like when you pull a hair out of your food and act like it’s your own even when you’re almost positive it isn’t.

 

I was okay for a while, bug-wise, and then another wasp came around. Jason thought it might be the colors I was wearing, so I threw my purple jacket on the ground. No. I took my pink water bottle off the table. No. It looked as if it wanted to land on my faded green shirt (green? Really?) so I took my shirt off. Not even THAT helped, so Jason whipped out the knife again. He chopped the wasp in half, and then then it attempted to fly up and towards me, it’s thorax hanging on by a thread of liquid goo. Are wasps like chickens–they can survive without essential body parts?? I readily assisted with my own butter knife and we did, indeed, kill it.

 

Even in dismemberment, the bugs seek me out.

 

By the way [mom], I was wearing an undershirt. This is NZ in the summer; I’ve learned to wear layers.