A wasp that shouldn't be alive at this time of year has turned up in my kitchen and it's trapped. I can't let it out because the rain has so swollen the doors and window they won't open. I have been watching it buzz from pane to pane. It made me think of a Buddhist retreat I used to go to in Wales. There they used to rescue hornets that came into the house; carried them out; released them. Then the hornets would return and so it went.

These Buddhists were vegetarians. They would not kill anything. Not even the slugs that ate their lettuces. But they did introduce ducks into the greenhouse so that the ducks might eat the slugs - which they did (I don't know how many lettuces they also ate).

So now I am asking myself if using ducks to eat the nuisance slugs that your conscience will not allow you to kill yourself is a little like extraordinary rendition...on the part of British authorities doing a favour to their US allies.

The moral is possibly that no one should watch trapped wasps for too long.