Perhaps this is because I am weird, but aside from the pain I found the wasp really interesting. It was between my big and second toes, so I got a good look at it, and I thought it was beautiful. It looked approximately like this:
At the time, I'd never seen one before, so I looked it up. These wasps hunt spiders, walking around on the ground, which is how the incident happened. But aside from self-defense, they are not aggressive and now that I live in MN, I often see them on flowers, gathering nectar. I've taken many photos like the one I linked, at very close range, and never felt in danger of being stung.
The thing I'm more wary of is hornets. Less severe of a sting but much more danger of accidentally stepping on a shallowly-buried nest and winding up in a world of hurt. One professor of mine did that while mowing his lawn, and he came to class all puffy and pink and with one eye swollen shut. "I got in a fight at this bar ..." he began, before telling us what had actually happened. :-D
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-27 06:03 pm (UTC)Perhaps this is because I am weird, but aside from the pain I found the wasp really interesting. It was between my big and second toes, so I got a good look at it, and I thought it was beautiful. It looked approximately like this:
http://hyg.ipm.illinois.edu/photos/spider_wasp_adult.jpg
At the time, I'd never seen one before, so I looked it up. These wasps hunt spiders, walking around on the ground, which is how the incident happened. But aside from self-defense, they are not aggressive and now that I live in MN, I often see them on flowers, gathering nectar. I've taken many photos like the one I linked, at very close range, and never felt in danger of being stung.
The thing I'm more wary of is hornets. Less severe of a sting but much more danger of accidentally stepping on a shallowly-buried nest and winding up in a world of hurt. One professor of mine did that while mowing his lawn, and he came to class all puffy and pink and with one eye swollen shut. "I got in a fight at this bar ..." he began, before telling us what had actually happened. :-D