5 ms·

I can't say I have ever been bothered by hornets as opposed to wasps. (Central Europe)

• throwanem 6y ago
  US here, but I've never been particularly bothered by wasps, at a picnic or otherwise. I suppose it helps that I don't mind them, or mind sharing food with them; they're peaceful until given cause not to be, cleanly in their personal habits, and quite beautiful. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on the open tailgate of my mom's truck, carefully holding a slice of pizza so as not to disturb the black-and-yellow mud dauber who had landed on it to nibble daintily at the edge of a bit of pepperoni. In the general run of human theory, I gather, such a moment should require all sorts of histrionics, but neither she nor I saw any need for them, and no one else was around to disturb her appetite or my fascination. On reflection, I suppose that moment must have done something to set a tone for my life in terms of my relationship with aculeates. And it's not as if they eat enough for a human appetite to notice, anyway. They're hell on caterpillars - I've seen a few P. metricus foragers entirely depopulate a thriving fall webworm nest in the course of a couple of days - but, having never developed a taste of my own for such things, that really doesn't bother me. And I do very much enjoy watching them hunt! Squirrels, on the other hand, can all go straight to hell.