Every year at this time the hornets come into my study to die. I don’t know why, or even how they get in.
I sit down to work on a sunny morning, the anemones shining in at the window and the breeze scattering yellow poplar leaves on the lawn. Suddenly a buzz-bomb of a hornet whizzes by my head and lands with a slap on the table. They are huge; a good inch long.
They buzz around aimlessly, slamming into the windows or splatting down on my desk, in the bin, on the carpet ……. so far, happily, not on me.
There are four in the room now. I’ve opened the window in the hope they will discover the great outdoors again. Two did, a moment ago, but most of them stay, soon to be found dead on the floor. I pick up four or five a day. The chimney is closed by a sealed log-stove. The doors and windows are usually shut. Yet this morning the end of the runway at Martlesham would be a quieter place to work.
