Bernadette Benda

Since it’s OCTOBER (aka “spooky” month) here we go, my scary (true) story of the month:

Do you remember War of the Worlds? (the one with Tom Cruise to be specific) I mean, did you see it, and do you remember this?

All that red stuff that just showed up out of nowhere and with no explanation except that blood was like raining from the sky because apparently the Martians were eating us or using us as water cans or something, and you were left to wonder what that red stuff was, thinking it was like some weird vein/fleshy mutation sprouting across the earth till you looked it up on Wikipedia and found out it was actually a Martian weed. Not….veins.

Ok so just keep that in the back of your mind.

It all started innocently enough some weeks ago. I was working out on the driveway (the weather has been beautiful in the mornings), when I noticed these things on the ground. They were tiny round like…balls. Like tiny. And they were brown and fuzzy. And they were EVERYWHERE. ALL over the driveway.

My first reaction was suspicion. What were they? I had never seen tiny little brown fuzzballs all over the driveway before. Ever (and neither had anyone else for the record, though no one in the house spoke about it, and we were all just wondering in secret). For some reason they reminded me of wooly bear caterpillars and that made me cringe a little as if bits of them were scattered everywhere (sorry for that image. It gets worse). But, that was unrealistic (I mean I could have been sitting in the middle of a wooly bear battle field as I did my squats, but I supposed not). And they couldn’t be bugs because – I mean they didn’t move and they were just fuzzy round balls.

Must be some sort of seed, I thought.

Time wore on. The brown fuzzy things remained and in fact, multiplied.

Well one day I’m looking out my window (probably writing), staring at the big oak tree right outside. I noticed that there is something on the leaves, clustered together: little brown fuzzy balls!

Seeds! Ah of course I say, throwing my hands in the air or something. They are not pieces of wooly bears that my wild imagination led me to believe. Just seeds. From an oak tree. That usually has acorns.

Like. I’ve never seen an oak tree with fuzzy seeds.

But I shrug it off and continue with life because who has time to worry about little fuzzy things growing on their tree and slowly taking up the entire driveway?

After discovering they were “seeds” I had the guts to poke a few of the little fuzzy balls, even pick them up. They were light but not very soft. I typically am the type of person that would take cool seeds and stuff inside and put it on the windows sill or something. But something held me back.

Maybe because when I saw some of them smashed, they were red. Like smashed berries, or something worse.

One Sunday night I come home to my family sitting on the porch, waiting for pizza and meatballs to arrive.

“Hey, you know the brown fuzzy things?” someone says (I forget who because clearly the trauma of what happens next has smudged my memory.)

“Uh…seeds or something?” I say or something to that affect.

“Bugs.”

*DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUUUUUUUUUN* *lightning cracks* *a blood curdling scream is heard*

“What?” I say, my blood frozen, my bones turned to ice, fear clutching at my throat.

The brown fuzzy balls are not seeds. They are bugs. Gall Wasps to be specific.

(GALL WASPS. WASPS. THOUSANDS OF WASPS IN THE DRIVEWAY)

I get the full lowdown. Gall Wasps are parasites. They lay their eggs on trees and form “galls” the little brown fuzzy things. Inside the fuzzy things is….(ugh the word is so GROSSS) larvae. LARVAE.

I TOUCHED LITTLE THINGS THAT HAD LARVAE IN IT. LARVAE IS ALL OVER OUR DRIVWAY.

After hearing this, 2020 just couldn’t get any worse. And they are not only in our driveway, but all over the CITY. And by city I mean ALL surrounding cities. On every oak there ever was. We are all going to be destroyed and taken over by Gall Wasps. This is how I end.

And that night I had a sudden urge to purchase a flame thrower and BURN EVERYTHING.

So obviously something must be done because we don’t want suddenly a swarm of wasps eating our house and us inside.

So, dad swept the driveway, bagged them up (off to the dump…???) but Google says you need to burn them. Snap crackle pop.

The other method for destroying them is aggressively stepping on them. Smooshing them. Which…they smash open red, red like blood. Like…that stuff in War of the World. The Gall Wasps are obviously Martians with a plan to take over our world and turn it into their own Red Planet.

We know what they are. We are prepared.

But the Gall Wasps are among us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, after a week of processing, the gall wasps are a little less threatening, but….I mean they’re still out there and like what. the. heck. How can so many things happen in just one year.

I am now in habit of sweeping the driveway before I workout on it, because I’m not going near those things again. And we now scream if one gets inside the garage. It’s really just added to the chaos of 2020 and honestly I have no idea when they will hatch, though I’m pretty sure they only live for a few days. Still uh, that’s a lot of wasps *sweats nervously*

In other news, it’s now less than one month till November and uh *screams* Who’s doing NaNoWriMo??