I received a call out of the blue about a month ago while Miguel and I were on the Gator doing something or other. This nice lady on the other end of the phone explained she was a PH.D. student in Boston and was studying wasps. She wanted to know if she could come to our farm and look for wasps. Sure, I hate wasps, maybe she’ll tell me some way to make them not such a problem.
This morning, Julia showed up right on time to do her wasp research.
Mainly we walked around and looked where you would normally see wasps. Under eaves, under stairs, in our head gate, by the fence hot boxes. Julia found 6 nests in the 45 minutes she was here, which she said was pretty good. Of course, that’s six I need to go and murder now before there are a bunch of the things flying around and stinging me when I’m trying to work. Did I mention I hate wasps?
When I was talking to Julia on the phone, she said I’d know it was her by her hair. Ahh college. You just don’t see colors like that in the corporate world. The closest I can come to this is my purple iPhone case. Not exactly stepping out.
“All you need is a plastic bag, forceps, and nerve.” Julia
Yeah right. A wasp had started building a nest inside of our bird feeder. I had planned on getting rid of this wasp myself by simply lighting the entire house on fire and standing in front and pouring gasoline till there was nothing left. Luckily our expert had a less permanent solution. She reached into the feeder with forceps and grabbed the wasp by the leg. She then deftly placed it in the bag and was done. She didn’t find any of the wasps she was looking for unfortunately, but as she said, there is no bad data. The absence of what she was looking for is data itself so she was happy.
Just one more day on the farm.