The wasp under the griddle

Decided to really scrub the kitchen today, so I cleared everything–and I do mean everything–off the countertops, stovetops, etc. There’s something really elementally satisfying about having a spring-clean house; it’s as if you’re starting with a clean slate, no mind-clutter, nothing to distract. I always do my best work in a clean house.

In the course of my scrubbing, I lifted the fifth-burner griddle off the stove. I’ve never used the thing so I didn’t expect a whole lot of stovegunk under it. And I was right, there wasn’t much.

What there was instead was a dead wasp. Ugh.

This was one of those really wicked-looking black and gold wasps with a long, millimeter-thin waist. It was curled on its side right in the middle of the griddlespace, next to the gas burner.

A few weeks back I’d heard the dry, chitinous tapping that hemipterans make when they fly into a hard surface. The sound was enough to have me wasp-hunting for a good hour, without luck. The next night I found an obviously exhausted wasp–same variety–trudging around under the coffee table, and figured the mystery was solved.

But here was a second wasp. How did two of the little buggers made their way into the house? I don’t keep the windows and doors open all that long, not with this heat, which is making me think “Fireplaces? Attic vents? Bathroom fans?” One of my discussion groups mentioned that these things can chew their way through drywall to get into a house. (Wouldn’t THAT make a good horror movie?)

The wasp probably landed on the stove looking for meat juice or fat, found the thumbhole in the griddle plate and crawled inside. He (or more probably a she) undoubtedly lost his way, couldn’t find the exit or maybe flew into the pilot light, and died.

Landing on the stove must have seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, and heading down an intriguing hole that probably held food and a good place to build a nest was a logical choice. Instead, he found himself doing something entirely different, far from where he wanted to be, and with no obvious escape back into his own world.

How bewildering and frustrating…and entirely human.

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