Saturday Photo: And Another Thing You Shouldn't Mess With--A Wasp Nest

This is the time of year when wasps suddenly appear around here.  It's often hard to eat outside because they come around looking for a snack.  Preparing for winter, it seems.   Usually, though, you can move your picnic a short distance or otherwise outwit them.

But sometimes they decide to set up housekeeping around your house.  What they make is quite wonderful when you think about it: a sort of piñata made of wood pulp that inspired the Chinese a couple of thousand years ago to make paper from wood pulp.

 However, as long as the wasps are actively residing in the nest you don't want to have anything to do with it.  This one was up the street a year or so ago, and the people who lived there got the city to come and take it down.  Didn't see it, but I imagine it was quite an operation. 

 There's a lesson there, too: don't go after something that might be dangerous unless you've got a good end game.  That's advice that some folks in power should heed, I think.