Just picked up my meds. Accidentally got given someone elses rx' as well folded up in mine. Luckily, weeded it out because I checked, some things meant to have gone on repeat (another 80mg or so of IR oxy(codone) and moggies, a couple of 5mg nitraz a day. Going to hoard those mostly, and use them on those odd occasions when a benzo is just, well, mandatory. That and seizure-prone nights. Always seems to happen when I'm asleep, or just waking up, and I know its not plain old fashioned sleep paralysis, because they start out, often as not, myoclonic, after I've actually stood up, or reached out to take chlormethiazole and end the bugger quickly (stuff hits really fast, within minutes of the gelcaps opening, even less with the home-spun base without the gelcaps, or its brominated analog, similarly sans gelcaps plugged before it can melt the rig) and then turn atonic (paralytic, doesn't affect breathing, but with complete, or mostly complete awareness of surroundings but otherwise, the only thing to do is pop a few chlormethiazole as the myoclonic phase begins before all hell breaks loose, then get into the most comfortable position and wait. Sucks ass.)
Thanks FUBAR. I just didn't want to section the nest when there was a live queen hibernating in there, and then have to go the effort of making a new mini-nest surrounding the chamber she was in and doping it with an extract of the original lest pheromones in absence screwed up her wake-up call. Its not something I've ever looked into, although I am aware that synthetic banana essence being amyl (pentyl) and isoamyl acetate can be used to enrage wasps since it is/they are a major compound of the pheromones released when a wasp stings, to signal its comrades to do the same.
Heh, makes me think, if ever I really had enemies who didn't know they were enemies...just give them some banana flavoured e-cig liquid, and lead them near a wasp nest
Its just, most people would sooner take a flamethrower to the thing, or poison them, rather than wait patiently for the queen to depart in the hopes of harvesting any dead wasps still around. God knows enough of them started raining into the room below when it got cold. The old man got stung in his bed several times, got stung, I think, myself once too. Although small and seemingly weakened at the time it wasn't much of a bother, and in any case easy enough to deal with. Just remember-, a little mnemonic i came up with, because bee stings are acidic whilst wasp stings are alkaline 'A (for alkali) comes before B in the alphabet, and V (for 'vinegar' before W) its not a complete remedy because there all kinds of other painful things injected, such as hylaruronidases, serotonin, pholipase-A2 and in the case of bees, several toxins including a potassium channel modulator not dissimilar to the venom of certain jellyfish. And uniquely, in bees, they deliver the smallest known polypeptide neurotoxin, and apparently its the only one known to cross the BBB, a cyclopeptide called apamin. Works in a similar way to leurotoxin I from death-stalker scorpion venom (Leiurus quinquestriatus) (quite an interesting little critter in its own right, one of the venom compounds, chlorotoxin selectively binds glioma cells, a type of brain cancer, and just about the nastiest of the lot, I'd love to some day have a crack at radiolabelling chlorotoxin, I can see at least two potential uses-labelling with a positron emittting isotope such as replacing a hydrogen with 19F or carbon-11 and used for selective PET scanning to show up such nasty ass brain cancers, or just plain old irradiate the shit out of the malignant cells as a targeted radiotherapy, similar to how radiolabeled MAbs (monoclonal antibodies) are used to target other sites of interest selectively. I bet there is potential there for a targeted radiotherapeutic for gliomas. And if your unlucky enough to have one, your effectively fucked if its advanced.
Bet it wouldn't be too difficult to get hold of the scorpions (as in obtain, obviously one does not wish to simply grab hold of anything going by the name 'death stalker', its not exactly a name that you'd give to something cuddly. Well maybe one of my ex cats, who had an occasional vicious streak, named sasha, after the good Dr, but 'slasher' was a frequent nickname since she had a bit of a schizo streak, in that occasionally she'd suddenly decide to sharpen her claws, on whoever she was contentedly petted by, sat with etc. at the time)
As for durian, no, it doesn't taste good. It tastes as bad or worse than it smells. I've tasted it, and its one of the nastiest things I've ever tasted or smelled that didn't come out of a flask or test tube. Took one bite and spat the thing out straight away. It wasn't just the smell, it tasted fucking awful. And the smell is as foul as its reputation. I've smelled mercaptans that were nicer. Relatively speaking, mind you. Since 'nice' usually doesn't come into it with R-SH.
I'm not surprised it divides SE asia. The SE asians who have no sense of taste and smell live near it, everybody else does their best to fuck off somewhere else.
Heh, coppers searched the place, but the loft got left alone. So even if I was of the ilk who would simply murder the nest and all in it, rather than having the respect for nature I do, I owe her one. Bet that was the reason it was left alone, since at the time, the place was buzzing with activity, so to speak. And who the hell wants to get into a crawlspace thats full of pissed off wasps. Not the only nest up there either at the time.
Been thinking about, once its emptied of all life, trying to preserve it in the same manner fingerprints are preserved, by vaporising cyanoacrylate superglue in a tank, with the sectioned nest hung up on a bit of fishing line or cotton thread etc.