That Bug's Me
Have you ever wondered about the presence of trends in your life? I am sure others have, philosophers, theorists, statisticians. What am I talking about? How you can go your whole life barely giving a particular thing attention, or go your whole life never particularly encountering something and then "wham", "bam", dot dot dot "jamma boom boom" there it is, reoccurring over and over.
Well, my particular trend involves my exposure and encounter with bugs. Where does it all begin? I moved into a basement apartment in which roly poly bugs (those things with armor- like skin and which roll up into a ball for defense) and spiders (eating the roly poly bugs) are everywhere. I am constantly vacuuming roly poly carcasses and other spider left-overs and sucking up troubling spiders.
Recently, a very interesting large, fat abdomen, white/yellow spider with dice like markings on its back; made her web just outside my front door. It's a good place for a spider web, if you are a spider. There are two porch lights that attract droves and droves of flying, walking, running, and crawling bugs. Moreover my porch's awing, support poles and the front of the building provide great spider web structure. This particular spider decided to build her web right where I walk. Many times I have walked into her web, which happens to be right at eye level. The web gets all over my face and hair, the tiny dried bugs attached too. It's not something I enjoy. I try to allow spiders their place on the earth but I certainly don't want fat abdomen, large white/yellow spiders with dice like markings in my hair, in my clothes or on my body in any place. Ick.
I decided to tear her web down one morning when she wasn't home. That evening it was back again. I tore it down. She put it back up. It takes her a couple of hours to make the web, it looks like lots of work. "Look", I told her. "Can't ya just build this thing somewhere else"? She didn't answer but I tore the web down and she put it back. The other evening she had a very nice, fresh, perfect web made and was just sitting there in the middle, thumbing her nose at me. She tossed her head over her shoulder and I looked around, noticing I was out numbered. There were dozens of her uncles, aunts and cousins, all over the place. That was creepy. There were at least 20 fat spiders just like her within 25 feet of me.
Aesthetically, she's a very pretty spider. I looked all over the internet to try and ascertain her species but had no luck. I suspect she is a garden spider or a crab spider. I really do enjoy watching her work and watching her eat, breathe, live. I have to keep tearing down her web though.
Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
"It's Raining Hornets"
I recently went with my mother to Albuquerque, NM for a conference. While there I bought my children a rain stick. While my eight year old, Chloe, was trying to fall asleep, she told me she heard sounds coming out of the rain stick. My boyfriend, Jerry, investigated. He said there were holes drilled all throughout the rain stick by some kind of wood boring insects. He carried the rain stick into the living room and we sat it in the window.
I cam home from work about a week ago and saw weird, flying, yellow/black, skinny bodied wasp looking things all flying in the window; near the rain stick. They were creepy looking so I sucked them all up into the vacuum cleaner. I examined the situation and thought it possible they had come from the rain sick. I carried the rain stick outside and pried the end off with a screw driver, fully expecting dozens of creepy bugs to emerge.
There were only rocks inside the bamboo. No wasps. Nothing. I decided to begin digging at the bug tunnels. No bugs for the most part but the bamboo near all the holes had been turned to sawdust. I did see a dead flying bug in a tunnel just like the ones inside the window. My daughters helped me further gouge out other bug tunnels. We found a worm inside one tunnel.
It occurred to me that the bugs might have come from some foreign land, perhaps carried to the U.S. inside the rain stick from Taiwan or Africa. I researched the bugs on the internet and found they were called pigeon horntail wasps, a thoroughly domestic animal.
Ichneumon Wasps - "Not White Anglo Saxon Protestants either"
I talked to Jerry on the telephone. I was telling him about my pigeon horntails while he was on lunch break. He is a tall, dark and handsome tree surgeon, knowledgeable about lots and lots of things. After I finished my story about the pigeon horntails, how I gouged the crap out of the rainstick and then threw it away, he told me about an interesting bug.
He said he had encountered a creepy wasp in his work, usually hiding inside tree tunnels. He said these wasps were considered major nuisances to tree guys and that some of his coworkers called the wasps, "stump fuckers". (sorry for the language). He said he had always wondered what they were really called.
He told me that they were really long with equally long ovipositors. He said that he generally doesn't dislike bugs but this one gave him the willies. While we were talking on the phone I googled "stump fuckers" and very quickly found they were actually known as "ichneumon wasps".
As it ironically turns out, Jerry's creepy bug and mine were locked in a macabre connection. The ichneumon wasp is an awful parasite, using its ovipositor to find a pigeon horntail tunnel. Once it finds an actual pigeon horntail larva inside the tunnel, it stabs the larva or worm with the ovipositor (which looks like a horrific stinger) and lays its eggs through the ovipositor inside the pigeon horntail larva's body. Once the ichneumon eggs hatch, it's larva feed first on the intestines, guts, and other such organs of the pigeon horntail larva. The ichneumon larva don't eat the heart, lungs and head of the larva because they need the larva to stay alive as long as possible. Finally, the larva turn into flying bugs and emerge from the pigeon horntail worm, exploding its guts, side and skin, then emerging to begin the cycle anew.
Well, my particular trend involves my exposure and encounter with bugs. Where does it all begin? I moved into a basement apartment in which roly poly bugs (those things with armor- like skin and which roll up into a ball for defense) and spiders (eating the roly poly bugs) are everywhere. I am constantly vacuuming roly poly carcasses and other spider left-overs and sucking up troubling spiders.
"The Itsy Bitsy Spider"
Recently, a very interesting large, fat abdomen, white/yellow spider with dice like markings on its back; made her web just outside my front door. It's a good place for a spider web, if you are a spider. There are two porch lights that attract droves and droves of flying, walking, running, and crawling bugs. Moreover my porch's awing, support poles and the front of the building provide great spider web structure. This particular spider decided to build her web right where I walk. Many times I have walked into her web, which happens to be right at eye level. The web gets all over my face and hair, the tiny dried bugs attached too. It's not something I enjoy. I try to allow spiders their place on the earth but I certainly don't want fat abdomen, large white/yellow spiders with dice like markings in my hair, in my clothes or on my body in any place. Ick.
I decided to tear her web down one morning when she wasn't home. That evening it was back again. I tore it down. She put it back up. It takes her a couple of hours to make the web, it looks like lots of work. "Look", I told her. "Can't ya just build this thing somewhere else"? She didn't answer but I tore the web down and she put it back. The other evening she had a very nice, fresh, perfect web made and was just sitting there in the middle, thumbing her nose at me. She tossed her head over her shoulder and I looked around, noticing I was out numbered. There were dozens of her uncles, aunts and cousins, all over the place. That was creepy. There were at least 20 fat spiders just like her within 25 feet of me.
Aesthetically, she's a very pretty spider. I looked all over the internet to try and ascertain her species but had no luck. I suspect she is a garden spider or a crab spider. I really do enjoy watching her work and watching her eat, breathe, live. I have to keep tearing down her web though.
Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
"It's Raining Hornets"
I recently went with my mother to Albuquerque, NM for a conference. While there I bought my children a rain stick. While my eight year old, Chloe, was trying to fall asleep, she told me she heard sounds coming out of the rain stick. My boyfriend, Jerry, investigated. He said there were holes drilled all throughout the rain stick by some kind of wood boring insects. He carried the rain stick into the living room and we sat it in the window.
I cam home from work about a week ago and saw weird, flying, yellow/black, skinny bodied wasp looking things all flying in the window; near the rain stick. They were creepy looking so I sucked them all up into the vacuum cleaner. I examined the situation and thought it possible they had come from the rain sick. I carried the rain stick outside and pried the end off with a screw driver, fully expecting dozens of creepy bugs to emerge.
There were only rocks inside the bamboo. No wasps. Nothing. I decided to begin digging at the bug tunnels. No bugs for the most part but the bamboo near all the holes had been turned to sawdust. I did see a dead flying bug in a tunnel just like the ones inside the window. My daughters helped me further gouge out other bug tunnels. We found a worm inside one tunnel.
It occurred to me that the bugs might have come from some foreign land, perhaps carried to the U.S. inside the rain stick from Taiwan or Africa. I researched the bugs on the internet and found they were called pigeon horntail wasps, a thoroughly domestic animal.
Ichneumon Wasps - "Not White Anglo Saxon Protestants either"
I talked to Jerry on the telephone. I was telling him about my pigeon horntails while he was on lunch break. He is a tall, dark and handsome tree surgeon, knowledgeable about lots and lots of things. After I finished my story about the pigeon horntails, how I gouged the crap out of the rainstick and then threw it away, he told me about an interesting bug.
He said he had encountered a creepy wasp in his work, usually hiding inside tree tunnels. He said these wasps were considered major nuisances to tree guys and that some of his coworkers called the wasps, "stump fuckers". (sorry for the language). He said he had always wondered what they were really called.
He told me that they were really long with equally long ovipositors. He said that he generally doesn't dislike bugs but this one gave him the willies. While we were talking on the phone I googled "stump fuckers" and very quickly found they were actually known as "ichneumon wasps".
As it ironically turns out, Jerry's creepy bug and mine were locked in a macabre connection. The ichneumon wasp is an awful parasite, using its ovipositor to find a pigeon horntail tunnel. Once it finds an actual pigeon horntail larva inside the tunnel, it stabs the larva or worm with the ovipositor (which looks like a horrific stinger) and lays its eggs through the ovipositor inside the pigeon horntail larva's body. Once the ichneumon eggs hatch, it's larva feed first on the intestines, guts, and other such organs of the pigeon horntail larva. The ichneumon larva don't eat the heart, lungs and head of the larva because they need the larva to stay alive as long as possible. Finally, the larva turn into flying bugs and emerge from the pigeon horntail worm, exploding its guts, side and skin, then emerging to begin the cycle anew.
This bug is so creepy, it has caused theologians to wonder if God is really benevolent.
posted by Tammy Jo's/River Cities Dance Co. at 5:06 PM
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