From: TheeahTheeah-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 01:01:59 EDT
Subject: PLC: Lack of Wasp Activity??


In a message dated 10/27/2000 12:47:42 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
rlilly-AT-skidmore.edu writes:

<< New version ...
 
     There was a boy who, stacking wood on the wood pile, found himself 
astride of nest of
 ground wasps, and was stung terribly.  Then, as quickly as they had decended 
upon him,
 the wasps left.  The boy, spying the nest, thrust a long reed ...
 [I guess it all depends on what is 'new'].
 
 ciao,
 reg
  >>

===============================
Very latest (and possibly most definitive) version....

There was a boy who had been around the old wood pile so often that he felt 
he knew the wasps perhaps even better than his own (obstreperous, to be sure) 
family. Wishing not to see yet once again the terribly undignified spectacle 
of all those innocent wayfarers stung in ignorance, he picked up an old 
shtick and dared the wasps to be their old waspy selves.

Oddly enough (for the behavior of wasps is inscrutable, if also somewhat 
predictable) as quickly as they had descended upon him, the wasps left.  Lo 
and behold, he felt he had learned a good deal and perhaps saved a few people 
some exasperation in the process. (To say nothing of the demands on the local 
emergency medical room, in an economy with already strained resources.)

The boy, spying the nest, shook his reed one more time and said (before 
toddling tranquilly home), "And that's how you rob the wasps of their sting!"

(And you thought I'd given up and gone away.....)

Greetings to all the as yet unstung heroes,


pk


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