They’re in the trees

Every so often, I learn a “life lesson”.

In the middle of May, I met up with the usual suspects to go camping. When I say camping, I really mean drinking beer and burning stuff. Lots of fun. Anyway, that was the middle of May. We’re now past the middle of June. This is a significant time delay.

At one point, whilst wood was being chopped I had the great idea of chopping off a chunk of tree and taking it home to make something on my woodlathe of sorts. I lopped off a nice 4″ long slice of birch wood, and figured I could dry it out and make a bowl out of it. It went into my rucksack before the ride home, and was then dumped in the corner of my living room. Eventually, I planned to spin it around at high speed and wave sharp tools at it, but I left it in the sun so it dried out too fast and cracked.

On Friday morning, just before I went to work, I noticed there was a funny cracking sound coming from the wood. After prodding it, it seemed like the bark was coming away from wood. No great surprise, I guess .. the wood was probably just drying out some more and shrinking away from the bark. I also noticed a single small perfectly circular hole in the wood, which I’d never seen before. I prodded a wire in the hole to see if there was anything in it, but nothing exciting happened so I left the wood in the corner of the room and went to work.

Then when I got home: Buzzing sound near the window. Biggest FOAD insect I’ve ever seen in Scotland clambering nervously over the blinds. We don’t get many big insects here – I guess it’s too cold – but this was a bug of significant proportions. Eep! I carefully removed the Bug to the garden. Then I come back inside and looked at the bit of wood.

There are now three holes in the wood.

Jeez, so let’s assume the original hole had been there for a while and Bug #1 was long gone. Bug number #2 had just been relocated to the garden. So that meant Bug #3 had moved out of it’s Birch home and was now living it up in my flat somewhere. And Susan really doesn’t like bugs. “Hi honey, remember that lovely bit of wood I brought back from camping?”. Cue a frantic bug-hunt.

I found it eventually, huddled in the corner. It was the same flavour as bug #2, but a bit more energetic. I guess nature didn’t prepare them for bursting out of a tree into a double-glazed flat.

That bit of wood had been sitting quietly in the corner of my living room for well over a month. All that time, it had been playing host to two little maggots which grew bigger and bigger, until one day the wood started making cracking sounds and two big bugs ate their way out. It’s like a plot for a horror movie.

Won’t be doing that again.