A random Sunday in Darwin: Nancy vs. the wasps, and masala dosa

On this fine Darwin morning, I decided to dismantle the mound of some random thing outside my door. About two weeks ago my neighbour Chattu noticed it was getting bigger, and kicked it with her foot. At the time she said "ew, there's soft stuff inside" so I thought it was probably pretty benign.. it's just all mud, right?

Anyway, I thought I'd take it down with the broom handle. I whacked it a little, and it was rock solid.
So I whacked a bit harder, and the top chunk flew off across the lawn... revealing a collection of bright green wriggling maggots.

At this point an angry mother wasp which looked comically huge flew out of somewhere and attached herself to the slightly de-roofed mound. As I whacked at the mound a bit more, she buzzed around me trying to get me, but I managed to scare her off by waving the broom madly and shouting random insults.

As I revealed more of the mound, it was actually like an apartment building full of baby wasps. It was bizarrely fascinating, with the life cycle of the wasp completely illustrated. There were tiny green grubs, which turned into big green grubs, which then lightened gradually till they became big fat white grubs. They all looked so incredibly gross, like something out of a dead body. As they crawled all over the ground, I ran screaming to the garden hose and started blasting the bits of nest and grubs.

As I furiously hosed the piles of wasp apartment rubble, the mother wasp started dashing around me like mad. I wasn't sure up till then if wasps had feelings but she managed to communicate "get lost!" pretty well just by buzzing. Soon there was nothing left but a pile of grub bodies, and a very sad wasp that limped away to make her nest somewhere else...

And through all that there was but a single thought in my head (other than kill! kill! kill the wasps!)... am I allergic to wasp stings?

 The remnants of the wasp nest

Wasp nest dismantled, I went out for lunch at Saffron, a flashy Indian joint in Parap. On Sundays they do a special South Indian menu with the staples like dosa, idli/vada and oothapam. The masala dosa was perfectly done, crispy one end and slightly soft the other end, with a solidly flavoured masala potato stuffing. The chutneys were pretty damn good too (chilli, mint and coconut), and the sambhar satisfying, though the serve really was very small. Chattu had a chicken dosa, which strangely was stuffed with tandoori chicken. Afterwards there was mango kulfi and carrot halwa, which reminded me of those days I used to stir it in my kitchen, filling the whole house with the smell of sultanas and cardamom.