I hate wasps

I'm afraid of wasps. Ever since our 50-year-old neighbour suffered the indignity of being stung on the balls in bed one night, by a vagrant wasp hanging out in his PJs, I've lived in fear of them. True story.

Last night, for instance, I was in the pub down here in Cavan, drinking Mexican beer that was brewed in Belgium, and talking to a lad from Belfast called Dave about his dog called Dandy that had just died that day. All of a sudden he broke off from one of his dew-eyed slipper-chewing reminiscences and glanced down at my shirt with a look of terror spreading across his face. I wondered briefly if he'd just seen the face of his dead hound appearing mirage-like in my chest hair or something. So I was all set to throw open my arms so the pair of us could, you know, do what all fellas do in rural pubs in Cavan and just hug all that pain away.

But no. I had it wrong.

"Fucking hell mate," he said, backing away in fear and scraping his stool off the floor, "you've a big fat fucker of a wasp on ye."

It was the type I fear most. The old, fat, half dead wasp type that's too banjaxed to be able to buzz any more, so you can't hear him. And as he's too lethargic to fly any more, you never see him approaching either. Yes. The stealth wasp, invisible to radar. Rumour has it when they're barely clinging to life like that, they just prowl about gasping and looking for something to sting for no reason. Because that's just what they do. They're wasps. So not only are they furtive, they're mindlessly violent with it.

Anyway I flicked the thing off me and because I didn't want to look like a big girl, I calmly went to the jacks, and in the safety of the cubicle I took off my shirt and frantically whacked the shite out of it off the walls to kill anything that might be crawling about inside it. The Belfast lad was still terrified when I came back, scanning the floor and checking his clothes and asking everyone at the bar had they seen thon wasp anywhere hye?

Yep. I hate wasps. I've only been stung once, when I was experimenting as a child and trapped a few of them in a tin can and shook it a lot to hear them pinging about like nutters and making angry noises inside. Of course one of them got out and neatly reversed his arse on to my hand and wiggled his nasty little payload in before I knew what was happening. Ouch. It all swelled up and I was arthritic for a whole day. Now, I'd almost crash the car or fumigate an entire house if I so much as hear one in the vicinity, and I get so over zealous about it I'd try to swat one on a window with a frying pan.

I'm not into killing things in general, but let's face it, wasps are utterly, utterly pointless as insects. They lack the aesthetic of the butterfly or ladybird, the pest-killing ability of the humble spider and aren't as funny-sounding as Daddy Long Legs. Wasps, in fact, do fuck all except make irritating noises and hang around bins craving sugar, and then they randomly inject their arses into you for the hell of it.

Apparently they're more afraid of us than we are of them, but I dunno.

Oh yeah, and there was a band called WASP and it was supposed to stand for "We Are Sexual Perverts." Nuff said.