Wasps!

Image by Pascal Blachier

We live in the countryside, next to a farm with cows, and you know which month it is from looking at which insects you have to keep at bay. July means flies, and you have to outsmart them all day.

The kitchen has to be swept, mopped, scrubbed and disinfected every few hours. If even crumb is left out, a posse of flies will race down to fight over it.

As July turns to August, all the flies disappear. They vanish. You could leave a whole slice of cake out - but would they care? Apparently not at all. There's no sign of them.

But you had better move that cake for another reason: wasps. August in Hedgerley Wood means wasps. And it goes on meaning wasps (scarily for me, since I am seriously and increasingly allergic to them) till at least October. Then the numbers reduce. In November, there are still fewer of them, though those that remain are very large and very sleepy. They stagger drowsily across the carpet. A risk for people who like to walk with bare feet.

But this year, it is July - according to the calendar - but where are the flies? I haven't mopped the kitchen floor all weekend. But there are no flies on it. I haven't washed up the lunch dishes and it's tea-time now. And there are still no flies.

Instead, this afternoon, I heard a thrumming sound, outside the kitchen door - so loud that I thought someone had turned on a big farm machine. Until I looked out and up and saw the wasps.

A 15 foot high, swirling column of wasps, two yards from the kitchen window. It was too thick to see through in some places. It was immediately above the where the children's sandpit had been for months; we just happened to have moved it yesterday morning. Thank heavens none of the children was playing in it now, amusing themselves while I made lunch. The thrumming filled my eardrums.

I called my husband and showed him the wasps. 'A blizzard!' he said, astonished.

A noisy blizzard. I shut the kitchen door hastily as he ran upstairs to close any windows that might be invitingly open.

I am glad not to have to deal with flies this year. But I am scareder of the wasps.