Laboscope app

Friday

Problems with wasps continue. It is a big problem.

It was impossible to feed Midnight and the stray  cats wet food yesterday. So I had to remove it and just leave dry food out. I thought i might be able to feed Midnight his wet food at dusk. But as soon as I got outside I am surrounded by a hundred or more wasps, round my ankles, round the whole of me.  They swarmed in on me. They want that meat.

The nest must be very close, but I cannot find evidence of one. 

So I managed to push Midnight into the study, and shut the door, and fed him his wet food there. I cannot lift that cat. I dropped him the last time i tried, he was too heavy. 

This early morning, I went to the study door, the cat food is kept in there. And there was Jade sitting alongside Midnight on the swing. Jade was looking directly at me. She was very hungry. How can I feed two cats at once? Midnight will go and check on Jade as she is eating, but Jade runs away and leaves her food, and I wanted to make sure Jade got some food after yesterday. So I let the two cats see me through the glass preparing two bowls of food. I opened the door and Jade ran away as usual. So I ushered Midnight indoors, put his food down in the study, put the other bowl of food outside at the point where Jade had vanished from. And closed the glass door. Midnight wouldn't eat his food but was sitting at the glass door looking for Jade outside. She came out of hiding, and within 15 seconds the bowl of wet cat food was gone. Once Jade had eaten and left, Midnight turned to his bowls and ate slowly and I left him to it. Then he wandered round the bungalow sniffing and investigating everything.

When I finished my cuppa, I got up and let him out. But I cannot leave any wet food outside for the ginger cat who has problems with the dry biscuits. So, I have left the study door open (for the moment) with another bowl of wet food in it. But I cannot see the ginger coming in my bungalow. He is a feral cat and doesn't trust humans. If the wasps discover that food first, then the study door will have to be closed.   

So, soaking the dry biscuits with water again. That worked yesterday. The wasps investigated but were not interested. 

Now is this a silly idea. Someone suggested that the wasps were only interested in meat because they have larvae to feed right now.  I have a batch of wet cat food the cats don't like very much. What if I put that in a paper cup and hang it from a tree at the end of the garden away from the swing and the back of the bungalow? It is only going to be for the next couple of weeks while they feed their larvae. Wasps don't bother me, every August/September I have hundreds and hundreds of wasps at the end of the garden feeding off the honeydew of the aphids on the willow branches. I have to walk through dozens and dozens of them to get to the potting shed and garage. They land on my bare arms as I walk through them, but they fly away. 

I still remember, as a child, my mother having a total panic even with just a poor single wasp coming into the house. Rolled up newspaper, and it had to be chased and killed. I never understood that even as a child. I was never frightened of them.

Anyway I have written/rambled on too much. Creative to day is a kaleidoscope in Laboscope, pointed at the sun.

A nice hot cuppa tea needed now...