Have you ever gone to your car and discovered a parking ticket on the windshield? Relax. Here’s something much, much worse.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Have you ever gone to your car and discovered a parking ticket on the windshield? Relax. Here’s something much, much worse.
Here, in NW Louisiana, people have parked and awakened in the morning to find their cars under water and full of mud a mere two weeks ago.
We’ve had flood watches ever since.
That’s not mud.
Oh, my. And Iris thinks squirrels are bad.
Ah yes, waking up and finding your car filled with the restless spirits of the dead, wailing and sloshing into a slurry of ethereal white ectoplasmic goo.
But at least if you still fit inside you can use the carpool lane.
some sort of bee hive?
I gaze at this picture, and the picture gazes at me, and I know I shall never dream again.
@PZ, true, but that isn’t something that would occur overnight. The flooding did happen overnight.
Big ol’ wasps nest?
Before clicking the link I am going with terrifying nest of hornets.
Classic ’55 Nopemobile
Clicked. Wasp nest, not hornet, yellow jackets to be precise.
SHUDDER
Kill it. Kill it with fire. From space.
Larry, I was thinking that borrowing a bit of VX from the DoD would do nicely.
Don’t worry, MSU helpfully explains at the link how to deal with a nest of yellowjackets. This is the BEST advice:
What is that stuff? Papier mache or alien nest gunk?
Don’t go close to it without a flamethrower.
@Larry #12:
Take off and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
*Screams*
“Nuke the entire site from orbit–it’s the only way to be sure”
Out Ripley’d @#16
They can be amazingly aggressive. I’ve had two run-ins with them in the last several years, both unavoidable. For the first, I was on a ladder, and slid down it like a firefighter when they went for my eyes again and again. I’m too old to slide down a ladder like a firefighter, but I’ve never been the right age to have multiple stings to the eyes.
The second time (just last fall), they had built a nest inside a metal gate that I needed to get through. I got the padlock off without disturbing them to the point of stinging, but then they attacked when I moved the gate. I slapped what seemed to be the most aggressive one (half a dozen stings in no more than a couple of seconds). Big mistake: I slapped it against my other arm, just as it was stinging me again. I killed it — oh, did I kill it! — but squeezed a huge amount of venom into my forearm. It swelled up pretty alarmingly, and then I went through days of pain, burning, itching and numbness.
And during the attack, I dropped the padlock right next to the part of the gate where the nest was, and didn’t realize it till several minutes later. I did go back for it, and did not get stung that time, but I’m too old to run that fast.
Thus proving wasps have no taste. The ’59 Impala is the only choice for truly upwardly mobile insects.
@Paul K, hence my suggestion of VX nerve agent. Fast acting, non-persistent and heavily concentrated.
It operates the same way most other insecticides operate, it’s just a lot nastier.
Well, now I’m going to have nightmares
Well boy howdy! Looks like we got ourselves a bumper crop of nightmares this year!
Looks like a standard model republican (née thug) soapbox to me… or is it their Kandidate Klown Kar?
As someone who loves wasps, I’m glad someone saw fit to donate such a generous mansion for the hive.
Just once… Just fucking once, I’d like to see a SyFy movie a tenth as scary as this photo of that car.
To be fair, the parking tickets you would accrue in the amount of time it took to build that nest would be heart-attack inducing.
Vivec:
The aggressive ones terrify me, I’m severely allergic, and I don’t think my little epi-pen would me much help in such a case, assuming I could manage to use it. I think they are beautiful, though, and the structures paper wasps make are stunning. I do get up close and photograph the wasps around our house, they are pollen wasps, and they don’t mind me at all. In return, I make sure to rescue those who get in the house.
Oh yeah totally, I’m not saying that everyone has to love wasps or that all fear of them is irrational. I just kinda feel how shark lovers must feel when one of their favorite animals becomes “the asshole serial killer fish”
As near as I’ve counted, I have around 8, possibly a dozen different types of wasp on my property. Mostly on the garage and a nest inside somewhere.
For the ones outside, if they leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don’t leave me alone, their nest get sprayed with an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.
For the ones in the garage, I rolled three atomizer cans of acetylcholinesterase inhibitor in and closed the door. I’ll likely need to perform a repeat treatment to catch newly hatched wasps. Outside, we can coexist, inside, not so much. I don’t want to find out the hard way that my wife is allergic.
Vivec:
One summer, I was walking to Muddy Creek and I had a hoodie tied around my waist. At one point, I noticed a wasp decided to hitchhike on one of the hoodie sleeves, and was crawling toward my chest. Right away, I heard Mister in my head “don’t panic, don’t pay attention, it will go away.” Telling myself to breathe, and keep moving, I kept watching, and the wasp hung out for about a quarter mile, then took off. I had myself a slight collapse by the side of the road, but was seriously happy I managed to act like a normal person, and didn’t fuckin’ panic.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/oh-shi.gif
Where does a swarm of highly assertive hornets build their nest?
Any damn where they want, apparently!
As a child I was stung on the finger by a wasp (yellowjacket in the US I guess) two hours later my finger was like a sausage. Another two hours my hand was like a blown up rubber glove and by morning my forearm was about a foot across and the moving it was so painful I would pass out. After three days and a bucket of anti-histamines it went down.
I am, as a result, a bit scared of the little bastards.
I was up a step ladder around 10′ off the ground fixing some guttering when I noticed a ball of them around my feet. An hour or so later as dusk set I ventured back to find my next door neighbour with his jaw still on the floor. He said he’d never ever seen anyone jump from the top of a stepladder and hit the floor running a sub 10-second 100m. He didnt see me turn the corner and do a sub 1 minute 800m to the pub where I had several restorative beers once I worked out I’d left them well behind and phoned my far more courageous girlfriend who dealt with them with a spray can from 10 feet away. I couldn’t walk properly for muscle tears and lactic acid buildup for a fortnight.
Wow, that nest is HUGE. It must be several years old, which is quite uncommon. I love wasps like Vivec does, despite being stung on several occasions. Fortunately I’m not allergic.
“Hornet and Wasp sprays are effective in killing individual wasps and much like shooting skeet, they also provide a certain amount of recreation.”
While a massive yellowjacket nest makes for great nightmare fuel on its own, ANY nightmare fuel can be ‘improved’ by running it through Google’s Deep Dream Generator. You’re welcome.
Fortunately the yellow jackets in my area are the subterranean variety, but still super aggressive and fucking everywhere around the house because of all the chipmunk tunnels. The red/orange wasps are the ones that sometimes get in the house because of their nesting habits and have largely replaced the black wasps that used to dominate the area. Also, lots of carpenter bees and the occasional honey bee. Which reminds me that I really need to finally plant the back yard with milkweed to try and displace all the horribly invasive privet that got chopped with the few trees that were threatening the house. Feel a bit like a dalek because when I see privet on the property I must EXTERMINATE!
I didn’t I could get worse nightmares than the possessed alien goat and children playing with nooses on a swing set one that I had this morning. I woke up in a sweat and was not able to go back to sleep.
I doesn’t help that yellow jackets made their nest inside my hammock frame a couple of summers ago. It is made from bent metal tubes with drainage holes that they flew in and out of. Last winter I covered those holes with duct tape. Now I think I’ll just replace it with a wood version.
That’s enough planet Earth for today…
I’m guessing this is in Nopesville…
Erg, I left out a couple of words: “I didn’t think I could get a worse nightmare”
My avatar is me in that hammock, which I have not been in for a couple of years due to wasps. At least they are good pollinators, something that comforts me with my edible garden.
I once made the mistake of pushing a lawn mower over the opening to a Yellowjacket nest. I don’t think I’ve ever ran as fast as I did after they swarmed up my legs.
30+ stings will teach you not to mow the grass in shorts no matter how hot it is.
Parse @38, that link is awesome! Thanks for that.