Hitchcocks new release: The Wasps

Mississippi blues on the radio, corn fields rustling, crickets chirruping, sweat dripping....... what could be better? Am at the farm (Glens mum and dad's) and we have been harvesting table grapes today - in between rain storms. We picked Himrod (seedless, green) to be dried to raisins and Einset (pinky and really flavoursome - musky). Really bad year for harvests of anything - botrytis, powdery and downy - never seen all three together, white faced wasps, yellow jacket wasps, cucumber beetle, Japanese beetle and pesky birds. Corn has Ear worm, potatoes have Potato Beetle, brassicas have - you guessed it, Brassica beetle. Man, do we have it easy in NZ!!! I have seen horse flies here the size of small birds that rasp open your skin and drink your blood - the girls, already with fertile imaginations - are not finding it easy!!! This follows on from our slightly abortive attempt at exploring Toronto Zoo..........

So, we needed to go to the big smoke of Toronto to get Glen a visa for china - he is going over for some consultancy and leaving us behind. Sigh. I figure that is at least a bottle of Billecart Salmon Rose......... anyway. We got to Toronto and drove, drove, and drove some more. Man, did I feel like a country bumpkin - that is one socking great big city. Fell in love with the uppy/downy streets - all tree lined and the wonderful architecture - and that was just suburbia - high class suburbia, but still.. gorgeous. Finally got to the zoo - it has four, count them, four lanes just to get into the zoo. It even has it's own highway exit - I got the feeling it was bigger than Orana Park....... got past the acres of parking and hit the queues for entering the zoo. It looked like an small town was waiting to get in. Secondly, we almost needed to pawn the kids for our entrance fee and thirdly, we noticed the Wasps. Now I would like to write at this point that our kids have never been stung by or bothered by wasps, nor have we used them in any sort of child obedience programs. They have however, an irrational fear of wasps. So as we were standing in line working out how many bottles of wine we could have bought for the same price of entry, we explained nicely to the kids that wasps will leave you alone if you don't get agitated. Right, problem solved we thought. So, slightly frazzled by the wait in the queue in the sun with wasps hovering, we jumped on the ZooMobile - a little train that chugs around the zoo. Great, all relaxing and good. Until the Heart Attack. Someone inconveniently decided to have a heart attack, which meant that the ZooMobile was out of action until the ambulance left. Ok, picnic time. Went off with our goodies and sat down at a table to eat. We were watching the cutest lil squirrel eating trash (I know, it isnt good for its digestion - especially the alfoil) when the wasps arrived. You know the Hitchcock film The Birds? Well, we had our own, The Wasps. It was a swarm, nothing less. Kids crying hysterically, G and I trying to eat a bit, checking for wasps before drinking, girls wanting to leave and go home to NZ and the wasps having a feed. Then the seagulls arrived and it was just pandemonium. We left the squirrel, seagulls and wasps to slug it out over the remains of our picnic............ good thing we got an annual ticket eh?

We did manage to see an extraordinary range of animals though -- polar bears (mamma bear and two cubs), grizzly bears, bald eagles, bison, raccoons, cheetahs, giraffes, cougar, patted stingrays......... and lots of wasps.