*shuts web page and puts head between the knees* It's fur. It's fur. It's fur. It's fur. It's fur. It's fur...
(Seriously wish I had noticed the 'bugguide' in the link.
Sorry...I thought I'd put enough warnings in the title and the "entomology" and the bugguide in the link...sorry...
Not your fault... I wasn't paying close enough attention!!
Bugs!
Time to send in the Mobile Infantry?
The SF writer's brain says "Gengineer these wasps to recognize the unique scent of one person or a family of persons and accept it as 'one of us.' Then use them as house-guards. Then, of course, have Something Go Wrong with the program.
Go for it!
Perhaps some form of gengineered fungus that alters the wasp brain? Parasites get really complicated . . .
Wow...That's simultaneously stunning and appalling.
I'm reaaaaally glad that that isn't my couch!
I suspect that someday the guy who thinks it's clever to leave it there is going to wish he hadn't, but maybe not.
From a few other things in the pic, I suspect it was a case of a house that hadn't been in use for a while. Maybe a vacation home or something.
Down in the comments under the picture, it said that the house had been abandoned for years--it was inherited, along with the old family farm, but the owner didn't live anywhere near it.
Going to be hard to fix it up for a B&B or something in his declining years...
E.
Reminds me of the time that some bees got into my parents house. I ran into a bedroom and stuffed a towel under the door (I was a kid), and I screamed my head off. Thankfully, my dad was an amateur beekeeper, and he had a smoker to calm them down and take them outside to put in a new hive.
Wow, it turns out that wasps also like to kick back on the couch. Who knew? Do you suppose they turned on the TV? And drank all the beer?
Well, it's not like the vandals will be hanging about to drink the beer, is it now?
*pictures a hive of drunk wasps and snrks*
Having encountered drunken wasps, I'd suggest you don't go there. They're mean drunks.
Hell, most of the wasps I've ever come across are mean sober, so I wouldn't expect anything else.
Mind you, I tend to symapthise with bees and spiders over wasps, so YMMV.
"Hi, I'm the County Tax Assessor, and you haven't paid...um, sir, can you get off the couch? Sir? Sir? Aiieeeeeee!"
Mimic 3: The Wasps' Revenge coming this fall.
Urgh! We had a nest of the common wasp ( http://www.arkive.org/common-wasp/vespula-vulgaris/) develop in our attic about five or six summers ago. We didn't realise until too late...went up there one evening to fetch something and beat a hasty retreat. Luckily (for us, not the wasps) the cold always kills them off in the winter - all but the new queen, who goes off somewhere else to hibernate - so we were able to reclaim our attic later that year. The empty nest is a rather beautiful (to our eyes, anyway) sphere, about 18 inches in diameter. My niece took it to school for a science project. Don't think I'd want to take that sofa though...
Hope the house doesn't get burned down.
Hope the house doesn't get burned down. | 
