The Associated Press has discovered the one thing State Department employees are more frightened of than a backlog of passport applications: wasps! Cicada-killer wasps to be precise, which have infested areas around the State Department’s headquarters at the Harry S. Truman building on C Street NW.
A memo obtained by the AP tries to calm the fears of Stateys regarding the menacing looking wasps by pointing out that they are “generally not aggressive and do not pose a threat to humans.” Hilariously, whoever put the memo together then decided to provide a link — notably (and perhaps lazily) the very first Google return on a search for “killer wasps” — to a University of Kentucky entomology department web page that gives a detailed description of the species, in an effort to ease the worries of employees who have noticed the infestation. Unfortunately, as the AP article points out, the link actually points out that male killer wasps can be quite aggressive during mating season, which incidentally is right now.
So the next time you run into your favorite State Department employee, make sure to sneak up behind them and make a loud buzzing noise — watching them jump should be worth at least five solid minutes of laughter.