UNCLE

North Carolina, I give up. Enough with the insects, okay? I give up. I concede that nature hates me.

I have good reason to think that my car has a nest of bees inside. Does that sort of thing happen to normal people? What would someone do if their car was full of bees? Will I at least get some delicious honeycomb out of the whole ordeal?

Moby Centipede

A week ago there was a gigantic centipede taunting me from the ceiling, but I was having a Rolling Stones underwear dance party so I couldn't be bothered to kill it. By the time I was done, the centipede had stopped peeping at me and gone back into hiding. I have been trying desperately for these past few days not to think of it predating the corners of my quaint apartment while I sleep.

Tonight, it returned: (Actual size of insect = approximately 2 inches)



You'll be pleased to know that I didn't even scream when I saw it. I let out a cry of outrage that it would dare flaunt its vulnerable position (an obvious insult to my integrity as an insect assassin) and aspirated it to the oblivions in my vacuum cleaner. Centipedes are predators, but I think this victory over arthropoda reiterates that I am a more accomplished predator than most natural things. TRY ME.

Synopsis of every spring since college:
Rainy day = I wish it was nice so I could go outside and enjoy myself
Sunny day = migraine and panic attacks about insects

Now that it's getting warm and flowers are blooming, my porch is swarming with hornets. I'm not used to gigantic hornets because I'm from Chicago, where bugs die in the winter and don't get a chance to grow larger than my thumb. I can hear them buzzing though my window pane and when they bump into my window, they make a tapping sound. It's giving me goosebumps, the scary movie kind.

I'm not saying we need to go back and revive the Silent Spring project, but maybe the size of insects here has gotten out of control. Are there any non-chemical ways to keep insects off my porch?? Keep in mind that I don't have half the hand-eye coordination to swat at them.

Animal Fact Time

I mentioned in the previous post that I watched a documentary on Africanized bees last week. I learned a lot of things about bees in spite of the overarching humanist framework that clouded the perspective of the entire documentary-- "We have to learn to live in haaaaaaaaaaaaaarmony with the apian world!" Yuck, isn't it enough that I make weak attempts to live in harmony with the human world? I also could have done without the dramatic bass-thumping, five-minute death scene in which a nest of Africanized bees attack a man in his yard... especially the part where he's writhing around on the ground with insects blanketing his body. Not very educational.

Okay, Animal Planet documentaries have their faults. Let's just say I learned one really cool fact about bees and that made it worth while.

In AFRICA, where Africanized bees obviously originate, beekeepers have tried to relocate their colonies to South Africa-- however, another species of bee (the Cape bee) already lives there. The Cape bee has an adaptation to the high winds in this area-- their queens are often blown away from the nest, so the workers have the ability to lose the reproductive suppression that the queen imparts. Basically, the workers can become queens. These Cape bees are sometimes able to infiltrate the African bee hives, where they begin to lay unfertilized eggs that are basically just clones of themselves. The African bees care for the Cape bee larvae and original imposter queen as if she were part of their hive... and kill their own queen. Meanwhile, the Cape bees do not forage for food and simply live as freeloaders until the nest is run into the ground.

Those Cape bees are mooching superheroes-- a role model for all those moochers I knew in college.

I don't believe anything I hear on TV: Sources
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622343.600-cape-invaders.html
http://www.beekeeping.org/articles/us/battle_of_the_bees.htm
http://westmtnapiary.com/africanized_bees.html

At long last:

Today I did a couple of things that I have been wanting to do since I was five: I played with mud, mated frogs, and didn't wear a hat in January. All of these amazing events were brought to me by the University of North Carolina!

When we mate the frogs, we have to create some sexy mud-lined motel rooms for them so they feel comfortable. Then we lovingly inject them with hormone to get their mojo working. We put some frog choruses on to set the mood. Tomorrow, I'll run into the animal room like a kid on Christmas morning to see if my little Emma and Mr. Knightly, Janet and Brad, Beatrice and Benedick, Miss Piggy and Kermit, Bert and Ernie [don't be so homonormative], Dominique and Roark, Mountain Girl and Kesey, Lara and Zhivago, Margarita and Master, and Maude and Harold have successfully completed the only relevant task of their short lives.

When I was little, my little girlfriends would come over and play house in my tree fort while I dug through the garden looking for slugs and undeveloped cicada larvae. They braided one other's hair while I sprayed beehives to see if bumblebees can fly wet. They tattled to my mom while I dissected dead birds with sticks. Those little bitches.

By the way, bumblebees can fly when they are wet. They can pretty much fly fast enough to catch up with a ten year old who is running away as fast as she can. When they sting you in your mouth, it looks like collagen injections. Now you know!

holy crap

... I just saw a hornet the size of my toe. The toe next to the big toe. Why are the bugs bigger here? WHY!?

Also, did you know you aren't supposed to kill hornets? Because if you happen to be within some proximity to the nest it will release all these "I've been MURDERED" pheromones and the whole hive will come after you.

Also, only YOU can prevent forest fires.