"Mother disgusted when son bit into a Waitrose cupcake and nearly swallowed a dead WASP"

From The Daily Mail:

A mother was left disgusted after her son bit into a Waitrose cupcake and nearly ate a dead wasp.

Sue Weightman, 52, bought the £1.99 pack of four treats for Alex's 22nd birthday. She was stunned when the civil servant apprentice took a bite out of the toffee and banana flavoured cupcake and found a wasp under the frosting.

Yes, that's a bloody outrage.

If you bite into a Waitrose cupcake and find an insect, you'd at least expect something nice and homely like a ladybird or maybe something more upmarket like an Old World Swallowtail butterfly.

Common or garden wasps are for people who shop at Tesco or Sainsbury's.

And Aldi shoppers would bite into something nice and crunchy like a dung beetle.

"Foreign millipedes to blame for Australia train crash"

Possibly one of the greatest headlines ever in The Evening Standard:

Hundreds of the creatures were found squashed in a slippery mess on the track.

David Hynes, spokesman at the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia, said: "Millipedes are one of the factors we are going to take into account."

Six passengers were treated for neck problems after a train pulling into a station at Clarkson, 25 miles north of Perth, ran into a stationary one, the train company said.

As British Rail would have said, "It was the wrong type of insects."

Fun Online Polls: Midges and Tree diseases

With a reasonable turnout of 88 for such a left field question, the responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Have you noticed more midges than usual this summer?

No, fewer than usual - 42%
Yes - 36%
No, same as usual - 22%

That's me told then. I could have sworn there are/were more than usual, perhaps I was jsut unlucky this year. Or maybe it's very localised - more in some areas, fewer in others?
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Sticking with the nature theme, the BBC informs us that there is an "Unprecedented threat for UK trees from pests". Sub-text: boody foreign pests, coming over here, taking our jobs, killing our trees.

They list five such nasty diseases/pests, which one do you think sounds scariest?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Julian Assange and midges

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What would you do with Julian Assange?

Allow him to go to Ecuador - 48%
Leave him to sweat in the Ecuadorian Embassy - 27%
Extradite him to Sweden - 11%
Cut out the middleman and hand him over to the Yanks - 7%
Other, please specify - 6%

Good, that's that settled then and I'm with the majority on this one. The turnout was very high at 170 votes, thanks to everybody who responded.
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I've noticed a couple of articles saying that there are more midges this summer because of the particularly warm, wet weather.

This week's Fun Online Poll - have you noticed more midges than usual?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Cow attacks finally go mainstream

From The Metro:

Although dog bites accounted for about half of all the 12,410 admissions caused by animals, there was also a 19 per cent rise in those caused by bites or stings from insects that included bed bugs, mosquitoes and fleas. In total, bites and sting cases went from 3,040 in the previous year to 3,620 in 2010/11, with London the worst-affected of the regions.

Some 2,560 admissions were for people bitten or struck by cows, horses and pigs.

No shit, Sherlock!

From The Metro:

Larger people are more likely to suffer an attack by midges, according to experts who say it's down to their provision of 'a more substantial visual target' for the biting beasties...

Professor Jenny Mordue from the University of Aberdeen's zoology department, leader of the study, explained that the setting around the shores of Loch Ness is 'classic midge territory'.

'The preference for the insects to target taller people could be associated with midge behaviour and flight patterns, as midges are found at great numbers with increasing height, particularly between one to four metres,' she continued. 'Larger people would provide a more substantial visual target for host-seeking midges as well as greater amounts of heat, moisture and attractant semiochemicals, such as carbon dioxide, which encourage midges to bite.'

Hooray! Boo!

From the BBC:

A delicate, blue-hued insect has re-appeared in the UK after an interval of more than half a century. The dainty damselfly, a smaller relative of dragonflies, was washed away from its single East Anglian pond in the severe coastal floods of 1952/3.

Now, a few individuals have been found at a site in north Kent. Conservationists believe the insects were blown on the wind from France or Belgium where they have become more common...

... wait for it...

... probably due to climate change.

"Beekeeper Christopher Weaver is killed by own swarm"

From The Metro:

A beekeeper and personal injury lawyer died after he was attacked by his own swarm, it was revealed today. Father-of-two Christopher Weaver, who was not wearing protective clothing, suffered sting to his head, chest and stomach...

Apart from reminding us that it's not just cows and swans who are fighting back, that combination of him being a 'personal injury lawyer' and 'not wearing protective clothing' opens up whole new world of satirical possibilities.