I've been having problems waking up at civilised hours these days. The alarm-clock rarely works, or rather, it does work, but I don't hear it, or turn it down in my sleep; the sun has long since lost its waking effect on my body; and my will was mollified to the point of despair. However, something managed to wake me up at 2 p.m. today.

The thing in question was a wasp. And it did not land quietly on my smooth skin as you may hope, it STUNG THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL OUT OF ME. I never, ever, woke up this way. Fancy this: you're asleep, hence unconscious, then all of a sudden you're conscious, but the only thing in that consciousness of yours is a pain like you can't imagine where it comes from. At first I sort of imagined, in my dazed and confused state, that I had slept on my shoulder in a bad way and blocked the blood circulation there, or something. But then it was obscenely too painful to be that. My mind was all pain and I wasn't awake enough to even think, so I barely remember anything. But then I looked around and saw something crawling on my bed. Thinking it was a spider, I turned the light on. [The blinds were down.] It was a goddam wasp. Now the pain made a lot more sense.

I took one of the many empty glasses that are scattered in my room and imprisoned it in that crystal trap. I spent the following 10 minutes trying to wake up for real and rubbing my shoulder. It's unbelievable how painful a wasp stinging is. I'm still pained now! And it's 8 hours since the fateful sting pierced my innocently white flesh.

Talking of wasps, there are now 7 of them dead at the foot of my window. There's probably a nest somewhere in the roof and all those wasps just fall into my room, barely certified flyers, and die. It's a pain in the butt.

The other thing is that sting. That wasp, the bed one, has this massive thing coming out of its butt. It's disgusting, and to think THIS got into me and injected its poison bullcrap right in me, well I feel violated. I'm ok with wasps stinging the shit out of you when you try to smack'em to death, or when you tease them, or even when you're just hanging around and your ankle happen to bump into them, but I wasn't even moving. For God's sake have pity over the immobile! The possibility that I actually moved in my sleep and somehow rolled over said wasp is not entirely impossible, though. Just my luck to roll over a wasp. First, I don't think I move much in my sleep; second, what are the odds of a wasp being right there when I do? My guess is that they are not high, but sensibly higher when at least 12 wasps have been known to die in your bedroom, which is the case in my situation.

What's the point of wasps having stings? How good is this defence? Let's analyse this. Imagine you're a wasp, a human comes along. You're in danger. So you decide to sting the fucker. The human is now obviously in pain and enraged. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in that condition, a human is more driven to KILL the wasp than anything else. So how good is that weapon? It does not immobilise the human, or any other predator for that matter, and all it does is enrage them. That probably was a weapon intended to be used by the hundreds; I can imagine a hundred wasps being something of a considerable threat. But if you're a single wasp, it's mostly pointless. Especially if you think you need defence against a peaceful day sleeper. Fuck wasps.

©Nicolas