Paper Wasp Polistes exclamans

Wait! Don't spray those wasps! Paper wasps are non-violent unless you try to take close-up flash photos of their nest. Their motto in that situation appears to be "Die, papparazzi!" But a single wasp buzzing around the yard has bigger fish to fry, such as killing our mutual enemies (flies and destructive caterpillars), and poses no threat to the casual human observer. Since they are contributing members of the local ecosystem, you will find paper wasps galore at the Twisty Compound, with no injuries sustained in 2004.

The queen builds these elaborate combed grub incubators out of spit and wood. Her 20 or 30 adult constituents feed the aforementioned bugs to the larvae. At the end of the summer, the queen holes up somewhere, and the rest of the colony snuffs it, leaving the nest for geeks like me to collect and stash in a cigar box.

Photo: Abandoned nest, August 2003

Photo: Active wasp colony beneath the Varmint Research deck, just seconds before making their objections known in no uncertain terms. August 2004.