Because I needed it, I now have something else to worry… no panic… about.
At lunch today, a woman told me about GIANT wasps that live in France.
These are no ordinary wasps. First, she held out her thumb and index finger about three inches apart to show me how big they are. Then, she told me about how she caught a baby one once in her kitchen which stunned the pompiers she’d called to come find and get rid of the nest of them she was sure was in her attic. (pompiers are the firefighters. If you have a nest of stinging insects, you call them and they come kill it. They apparently will also eradicate nests of poisonous worms that live here. I’ve not called them for my wasp problem since you have to have a place to have them look) Finally, she told me about how they once for no reason swarmed and attacked a woman she knows. The woman was out running when the wasps attacked her head and neck. Luckily, she was running with a local running club whose leader happens to be the chief of police in that town and he was carrying the antidote and injected her immediately, saving her life. But she did still spend a week in the hospital.
Sure, it all sounds like the kind of stuff that Snopes would dispel but there’s no such website in France. Ok, maybe there is, but it would be in French anyway so I would likely misread it and think it was confirming all this.
Wickepedia does confirm some of it. But its entry on les frelons is in, yes, French. I’m sure it says it is found in the south-west of France. Note to self: don’t go there.
Another site has a picture of a woman with one of these things… which is apparently actually a hornet… on her nose. It is huge. (they grow to 35 mm which according to Google is 1.38 inches) If one of those things comes around I will faint. It’s a site that claims the hornet is a misunderstood gentle giant. Hornet propaganda!
Still more searching (in English) reveals that this is actually the Asian Hornet, likely brought here in a shipment of merchandise. Damn global economy. At least it isn’t the Asian Giant Hornet.
“Hornet propaganda!” — LOL!!
I knew Pinocchio’s nose grew when he told a lie, but now you find a woman’s nose who grew to 35mm on a website. That’s the normal size of commercial motion picture film. Home movies used to be on 8mm, more the size of a nostril, I suppose. When projecting a movie, have you ever seen hair in the gate? That’s because, apparently, the woman above whose nose grew into a movie film had nose hair. And she was probably a white anglo-saxon protestant, thus they showed her that way represented by a wasp on her 35mm nose. It’s amazing how I can follow these blog threads with such insight.
I usualy find D.A.D.’s comments quite amusing, but I have to confess I found this one confusing. 🙂
Sad I must clarify my ramblings, but when I wrote the above I had just completed a trying conference call with corporate pooh-bahs, and just wanted to type aimlessly. Here, I think, is what I attempted to say: in response to Mandy’s line of “who has one of those things on her nose. It is huge. They grow to 35mm……” I made the attempt to parallel the story of Pinocchio’s growing nose to this woman, as if her nose grew (ignoring the fact Mandy meant the wasp grows, not the nose). The thin thread of relevance to nose hair to film technology to the woman being a “wasp” was just idle random thoughts designed to lead the reader down a silly path of erroneous reasoning. Then I followed it up summarizing as if my observations actually made sense by reading the blog. There, now that should clarify exactly what I meant. I must work harder at creating funny material in the future, or my publisher will not give me an advance on my next posting.
wait a minute here… you know barney and you know the boohbahs? (http://www.boohbah.com/zone.html) kaitlyn will be beyond impressed now!
no no no……..pooh-bahs, not boohbahs. Like Winnie the Poohbah, not rude fans-at-a-ballgame booh! Bah! ‘s
ahh…it’s all clear to me now. i think.