This week when I gobbled a handful of blueberries something clamped down on my lower lip. I screamed like a little girl but discovered it was a japanese beetle and removed it without harm. Today I saw a big leaf inside my largest blueberry bush but as I reached for it realized it was instead a large wasp nest. In both cases, my first thought was Oh no! But then I realized how lucky I am not to know what a mix of junebug and blueberries tastes like, and how fortunate I was to find that wasp nest the easy way instead of the hard way! I guess it is all about perspective.
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Your post made me smile! And contains a prescription for happiness in general 
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drusket,
The mulberries here used to be frequently overrun by small urinary hexapeds (otherwise known as little ol’ p!ss-ants)… small, busy little black ants. I’d usually just brush or blow them off with a puff of breath, but if you eat them, they give a minty/tingly taste sensation to the fruit.
No fire ants here (yet)… they are perhaps the one thing I don’t miss about my native Alabama…
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Bugs are in a lot of food we eat. The reason you should not eat raw bread dough. I’m sure a few worms have made it in my peach pie.
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lol! i went to Army basic at the now former Ft. Mcclellan, A.L base . we were on bivouac setting up our tents. these 2 guys set up their tent in a sandy looking patch. i thought in looked odd in the woods. when we hit the sack, within 2min. those 2 guys come flying out screaming, covered with fire ants! the drills warned us to be weary of snakes and scorpions but not about fire ants. the poor bastards had to do the 15k road march back covered in ant bites.
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The saying you always hear when it comes to fruit is bugs know what is good. The reason certain HOAs don’t allow fruits is because they will attract things like a wasp. The HOAs trying to ban food growing has become such a topic that a state has past a law stating growing food is a human right in said state. Like I said though to the HOAs perspective it is just trying to make it so you don’t have a wasp problem. There is some fruit that is so sweet before it even ripens and hits the ground the insects will be enjoying it.
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All very true. And yep, those fireants are no joke. Of course you never get just one sting…by the time you notice it’s too late and they are all over you. They make a painful oozing welt that can take weeks to heal and often leaves a scar. Only got a few bites so far this year but it’s just a feature here…one I hope doesn’t expand to your areas, not something I’d wish on anyone, ha! You may already know that, amazingly, my all-time hero and fellow Alabama native, the recently passed naturalist E.O. Wilson, as a boy witnessed their first arrival to the US in the Mobile area.
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The fire ant is far from the worst ant though. There is a thing called the pain index scale for bugs. There is a channel on YouTube called brave wilderness who has climbed pretty high if not to the top of the scale. The worst pain index scale is from bugs that are not native to America. Almost at the top is bullet ants because it feels like you are getting hit by a bullet every time you get bit by one. If you are interested in the topic of painful stings Coyote Peterson over on Brave Wilderness has gotten stung by scorpions, been bit by fire ants, black ants, bullet ants and even has a scare that will never go away from the top of the pain index scale the warrior wasp. The good thing is some of the most painful insects you will not typically find unless you are looking for them or trouble. The tarantula hawk wasp is a solitary wasp and will only go after you if you are bothering it and the scorpions are nocturnal. Plus contrary to what most people believe most scorpions will be painful but not kill you. I think Indiana Jones said it best in one of his movies that the small ones are the ones who kill you. The bark scorpion the is only deadly scorpion in Arizona for example.
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