World of Wasps

Let’s face it – everybody hates wasps. Unlike their cute and cuddly counterpart, the bumblebee, wasps will sting you unprovoked, they’re ugly, and they probably ruined your picnic last summer.

Children are exactly the same, but when children get annoying, you don’t spray them with chemicals, you don’t try and swat them, and you certainly don’t poke their habitat with a big stick. It’s about time that wasps were treated with the same respect and understanding as children – somebody has to stick up for the poor creatures. It seems that the only thing children need is a quick visit to Alton Towers, and they’re soon back on the straight and narrow, so it’s quite clear that the construction of an amusement park designed especially for wasps is well overdue.

I propose that, in a woodland clearing, there be built rows upon rows of butchers’ shop windows, each one with open jam jars of different flavours and smells adorning their window sills. Scattered about the grass between these windows will lie hundreds of windfall apples, just waiting to be turned inside out by a swarm of hungry wasps. Trendy Ikea lamps are dotted about here and there, complete with that strange upside down design that wasps are so attracted to (there’s no real scientific evidence for the reason behind this, but my Ikea lamp always has a wasp or two milling about inside it).

It’s all well and good having such amenities and facilities built in a random woodland clearing, but it wouldn’t be serving much of a purpose if it were only the local wasps who knew about the place, would it?

Now we’ve all seen those pamphlets you can get that advertise amusement parks, with a little picture of a map and some vague directions on the back. We also know that wasps are probably the least likely creatures in the world to be able to decipher these directions. But wasps have a very keen sense of smell, and they have an even keener sense of vengeance, and it’s at this point that the whole thing starts to get biblical.

When a wasp is killed, it releases a potent pheromone that can be sensed by wasps from quite a distance away. Upon realising that one of its kin has been killed, wasps instinctively locate the source of the scent and inflict bloody revenge upon the transgressor. The sad reality is that for the wasps to find their promised land, a great sacrifice must be made. A wasp, selected at random, must be nominated as the sacrificial wasp, so that the scent of its body may guide others to the World of Wasps. Of course, the wasps will be deeply saddened upon finding their tragic friend lying face down in a blob of blueberry jam, but they’ll soon forget about it once they realise that all around them lay big piles of damp wood and soft fruit.

My one regret is that I have been unable to think of even one wasp-related pun to use in this idea. Furthermore, it is with a heavy heart that I announce the World of Wasps’ slogan as “The Place to Bee Seen”. But I’m sure that the wasps won’t mind.