Teaching Wasps the art of synchronized swimming.
Or
Way too much time on our hands!
Or
Coaching Wasps & Yellowjackets on the backstroke.
The next morning we got up
after a very comfortable sleep, made our coffee and again went to the
deck for breakfast. We were sitting there on the patio, looking out over Lago di Garda as we sipped our coffee and read the guestbook comments about the Aker’s vacation home. One of the visitors from Ireland had several issues to report, including an awful lot say about the wasps. These Italian wasps must be related to our American yellowjackets from Mt. Hermon because they do the same things, and they can be very annoying.
This morning we set out our breakfast of orange juice and pain perdu (French Toast to Americans) and here came the wasps, humming and buzzing and dipping into our orange juice. Now, we are not the type of people who are prone to whining and complaining. We, on the other hand, look upon this as a challenge.
A dear friend of ours taught us how to make a yellowjacket trap using an old plastic soda bottle partially filled with soapy water and narrow slits cut in the sides and a piece of wire coat hanger hooked in the mouth of the bottle. A piece of bacon is then impaled on the end of the coat hanger and placed just above the soapy water. The theory is the yellowjacket flies in through the slit, lands on the bacon that's hanging from the hanger, and begins to gorge itself on the meat. When they have had their fill and are ready to leave, they fly a little bit down and backwards in order to get airborne. If you have your liquid close enough to the bacon their wings touch the liquid and they become unable to fly out through the narrow slit. Eureka!! Voila!! That yellowjacket is in the liquid and can no longer escape the soda bottle.
We decided to carry this one step farther. We are basically in the R&D phase here this morning. We are trying two trap styles. One is the Connie soda bottle approach using an orange juice carton and a piece of salami on a wooden kebab skewer and the other is a simple drinking glass half-filled with orange juice. As soon as the yellowjacket flies down into the juice I place something over the top of the glass and trap the critter. However this requires a great deal of time and focus, and one must maintain one's trapping position for hours. Consequently it just doesn't allow much time for sightseeing. Alternatively you can hire a local child for 890,000 lire an hour (10 cents).
Geralynn is sitting here laughing at me. She's trying to correct my English pronunciation as I am dictating this report to my computer, and I'm having a difficult time because I'm here in Italy, but I am still thinking in French, and today I am speaking with a bit of the Irish accent. When I am in Ireland I usually speak with a German accent. I don't know why, it just comes to me that way. Maybe because everyone else is speaking with an accent and I am thinking with an accent too. Anyway, my poor computer program is a bit confused. Needless to say, I basically have no foreign language skills, but I do great sign language.
At this point in our research the juice box with the slits in the side and the tasty piece of salami suspended above the juice has not had any customers. But, in the meantime, using the good old manual method and drinking glass, I'm still scoring lots of new backstroke students--6 so far. My theory is yellowjackets have relatively small hives they send out scouts to discover things to eat, generally in groups of two or three, and when they don't return the Queen eventually sends more scouts, and I think it's really to see if the first scout party is goofing off. OOps! here comes another customer right now, so I have to stop writing and concentrate on my actions.
C'mon….c'mon….a little further into the glass....Got him!!
Day two of our R&D project:
Well, the orange juice carton is a total failure. After careful reflection we realized we needed soapy water, not orange juice, and perhaps smaller slits in the sides. And I'm beginning to think the distance between the salami and the liquid is critical, and maybe the clear container tricks the yellowjackets into thinking there is clear sky ahead. Unfortunately I can't remember what the salami-liquid distance is.
However, the good old tried-and-true orange juice in the drinking glass works great. By the end of the day I had 12 Wasps and one fly. I think the Italian wasps are much smarter than our Mt. Hermon yellowjackets. They go in and out of the orange juice carton at will and laugh at us as they take off.
If you've gotten this far reading this you obviously have way too much time in your hands too. It sometimes amazes me what we do for entertainment.
Or
Way too much time on our hands!
Or
Coaching Wasps & Yellowjackets on the backstroke.
This morning we set out our breakfast of orange juice and pain perdu (French Toast to Americans) and here came the wasps, humming and buzzing and dipping into our orange juice. Now, we are not the type of people who are prone to whining and complaining. We, on the other hand, look upon this as a challenge.
We decided to carry this one step farther. We are basically in the R&D phase here this morning. We are trying two trap styles. One is the Connie soda bottle approach using an orange juice carton and a piece of salami on a wooden kebab skewer and the other is a simple drinking glass half-filled with orange juice. As soon as the yellowjacket flies down into the juice I place something over the top of the glass and trap the critter. However this requires a great deal of time and focus, and one must maintain one's trapping position for hours. Consequently it just doesn't allow much time for sightseeing. Alternatively you can hire a local child for 890,000 lire an hour (10 cents).
Geralynn is sitting here laughing at me. She's trying to correct my English pronunciation as I am dictating this report to my computer, and I'm having a difficult time because I'm here in Italy, but I am still thinking in French, and today I am speaking with a bit of the Irish accent. When I am in Ireland I usually speak with a German accent. I don't know why, it just comes to me that way. Maybe because everyone else is speaking with an accent and I am thinking with an accent too. Anyway, my poor computer program is a bit confused. Needless to say, I basically have no foreign language skills, but I do great sign language.
At this point in our research the juice box with the slits in the side and the tasty piece of salami suspended above the juice has not had any customers. But, in the meantime, using the good old manual method and drinking glass, I'm still scoring lots of new backstroke students--6 so far. My theory is yellowjackets have relatively small hives they send out scouts to discover things to eat, generally in groups of two or three, and when they don't return the Queen eventually sends more scouts, and I think it's really to see if the first scout party is goofing off. OOps! here comes another customer right now, so I have to stop writing and concentrate on my actions.
C'mon….c'mon….a little further into the glass....Got him!!
Day two of our R&D project:
Well, the orange juice carton is a total failure. After careful reflection we realized we needed soapy water, not orange juice, and perhaps smaller slits in the sides. And I'm beginning to think the distance between the salami and the liquid is critical, and maybe the clear container tricks the yellowjackets into thinking there is clear sky ahead. Unfortunately I can't remember what the salami-liquid distance is.
However, the good old tried-and-true orange juice in the drinking glass works great. By the end of the day I had 12 Wasps and one fly. I think the Italian wasps are much smarter than our Mt. Hermon yellowjackets. They go in and out of the orange juice carton at will and laugh at us as they take off.
If you've gotten this far reading this you obviously have way too much time in your hands too. It sometimes amazes me what we do for entertainment.
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