My front yard is a bit of a scary place — it’s been taken over by cranky stinging insects. Here’s a wasp that has a nest in my front door.
Scarier still, though, is this small cavern that has been excavated in my lawn, and is full of buzzing frantically busy creatures that I could not photograph well, because they were moving so fast to complain about my existence. It might be a swarm of Karens.
I’ve mentioned that I have an endoscopic camera. Anyone want to double-dog-dare me to probe deeply into that mysterious tunnel full of alien life-forms? I’ll do it. I’m not a-skeered.
Go for it! (It has a light, I hope.) Just…dress safely, those look like yellowjackets & they’ll mess you up.
Also can you ID the wasp in the top photo? (Doesn’t look like a yellowjacket.)
Sure, but be very very careful. Not just for you but also any other people in the vicinity. Have a safe retreat plan. Have defensive systems of some kind. Holes in the ground sometimes contain hypno… ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
Just remember that wasps and yellowjackets aren’t limited by the bee’s sting and die method.
For goodness sake man, you have a wife.
Mount cameras on some tarantulas and send them in. Like Henry Pym in Ant Man. What’s the point of consorting with creatures of the netherworld, Myers, if you don’t compel them to do your bidding?
BTW the other day outside my front door I encountered a pair of blue-tounged lizards interacting, and on spying a hairless ape they vanished down a hole under a paving stone and I was duly amazed.
Wait you guys live down there? :-)
For the benefit of non-Australians, blue-tounged lizards are not small. X-D
Example
If you probe the yellowjacket nest be sure to cinch your pants legs tight, yellowjackets will swarm right up there when defending their nest. Happened to me when I was around 10, been careful ever since.
For Eric, that’s a northern paper wasp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polistes_fuscatus
Looks like a European paper wasp.
They look scary but tend to be rather nonaggressive.
They’ve built nests over my doorway also as well as under the eaves. They have never stung me.
Internet double dog dares are cheap, something Goofus would have done. And I’m too big of a sissy to join you in person if I was there. So I’m advising against it but looking forward to the results.
I would love to see that! Be safe about it but YES, please do.
I’m wondering what the accepted collective noun is for Karens. ;)
A pride of Karens?
A “morony” of Karens? (I just made up that word on the spot, but it feels right)
I think the proper collective noun should be a cacophony of karens, but those Yellowjackets don’t qualify.
Karens are known for demanding to speak to the manager when they don’t get their unreasonable demands met, or appointing themselves as the enforcement authority of who can live/enter/park/make deliveries to their apartment buildings or gated communities.
They are usually white and female, though I’ve known a few who are neither.
A shriek of Karens? A homily of Karens?
For those who might be interested, James Lipton wrote An Exaltation of Larks, a book about what he called “venereal terms”. From page 9:
I agree. 8-)
Do you have any non-venomous/toxic small neighbors? Like hedgehogs? Hedgehogs are cute, they are welcome guests in Swedish gardens where people leave food out for them. In your continent opossums (or possums, I cannot tell the Australian and American variants apart) presumably play a similar role.
And avian dinosaurs are also frequent guests that will reward feeding with auditive feedback. I suppose your wasps buzz a lot but they rarely sing.
A complaint of Karens, of course. Or maybe a suggestion box of ’em.
Do it in the name of science, you will be justified in the end.
This guy has some interesting ways to deal with yellow jackets