The southern US is fig country, although apparently the Garden of Eden was as well. However, I’ve never known anyone to wear a garment made from the leaves. I’m afraid our delicate skin couldn’t abide the chafe, which has got to be a lot scratchier than a Croker sack. It was the figs we craved and not the leaves.

As a child, I grew up eating figs when in season and fig preserves during the other months. I loved climbing onto the branches and eating them straight from the tree. The love of figs was one of the things my husband and I had in common.

My heart was broken a couple of months ago when my son-in-law decided he needed to send someone over to clear my overgrown yard. The instruction to the yard-man was to clear the back, but somehow he failed to understand he was meant to clear it of weeds, and the two large fig trees loaded with figs were cut to the ground and dragged away. My lilacs, my Japanese maple, my camellia, and my Japanese magnolia were also victims. I howled like a banshee, and refused to look at the carnage.

My poor son-in-law, who wanted so badly to be helpful, was also a victim. My daughter uttered those words. “No good deed goes unpunished”, making me feel like the heel I was for not showing more appreciation.

Luckily, my husband had planted fig trees where my children lived as well, and I did get enough figs to eat to give me a week-long case of diarrhea. I guess I overdid it in compensation for having lost my own trees.

I became curious as to why my son, with fresh figs at his disposal, wasn’t eating them himself. “Why would you ever let figs go to waste? Don’t you realize they are delicious and wonderful for your health. I don’t understand why you’re not eating them? It is probably the best fruit ever created. Figs were even one of Christ's favorite treats.”

“I don’t eat them because wasps lay their eggs in them, and that’s just gross,” he told me.

“Are you nuts? Why would you think that? Wasps make big paper nests with little compartments to lay their eggs in. They don’t lay eggs in figs. You’re into too many conspiracy theories.”

We let it go at that, but later that day, I told a friend about his crazy theory. She thought the same as I did and didn’t believe it either, but since I was near the computer, we were both curious. I decided to see if anyone else in the world was crazy enough to think wasps laid eggs inside of figs.

Boy, was I in for a surprise. I had to admit there were a lot of things I didn’t know, and this was one of them. The first thing I didn’t know was there are over 100,000 different species of wasps and over 300 species of the paper wasps alone.

I thought I knew my wasps, I knew about paper wasps, and smaller wasps called a guinea wasp, and I’d only recently learned the thing I thought was a dirt dauber was really a mud wasp. I figured three kinds about summed it up. I certainly had no idea there was a fig wasp. A wasp so small that it can crawl into a pin hole at the base of a fig just meant for its entrance.

Not only did I not know my wasps, I didn’t know my figs either. What I learned was there are over 700 named varieties of fig trees, but thankfully only four types. After looking at pictures on line, I’ve decided the kind I’m used to must be what they call brown turkey figs, because of the brownish purple coloring.

Now for the really mind-blowing facts; figs aren’t even considered fruit. What is inside that brown skin are flowers and seeds that need to be pollinated. Thus, the fig wasps are designed to do the deed. I learned a new word. It is syconium and it loosely translates to a wasp condo or nursery. It might also be considered a brothel and a coffin. It’s a very versatile little chamber. Neither the tree nor the wasp can exist without the other. No fig ripens unless it has been pollinated by the particular fig wasp designed just for that variety of fig. There are male and female fig trees, but the figs on the male tree aren't eatable.

These trees I was so proud to have growing in my yard are actually carnivores, and now I understand why my son, who considers himself a vegetarian, refused to eat figs. What I’ve learned is a lot more complicated than I could have imagined, and I might not do it justice trying to put it into my totally unscientific vocabulary, but I’ll try.

The tiny female wasp finds the pin hole in the end of the fig and wiggles herself through into the fig. In the process, she loses both her wings and her antenna, but she won’t need them, because she’s not leaving. She lays her eggs and takes care of the babies until they mature, which must be fast, because the males and females become adults and mate before they escape into the great outdoors. The females go looking for another pin hole to wiggle through so they too can pollinate their own fig condo and lay their eggs. Once the new wasps leave the nest the ripening fig consumes the female and any male wasps left trapped inside.

The male fig wasp only survives a little while after mating, because he’s outlived his usefulness and is no longer welcome in the brothel. He does have one task remaining before succumbing. He needs to dig a bunch of little holes in the skin of the fig so all the females, except the mom, can escape.  Still in spite of his short life span, I’m not sure he didn’t get the best end of the deal. All this education is going to be hard to unlearn, and I’m afraid I’ll never enjoy a fig quite as much as before.

One site I was on said not to worry about it, because we all eat many bugs without being aware of it, and there's probably more in your beer than in a fig. Just to make sure it is worth it to try to forget all of this disturbing information and eat them anyway, I looked up some of the health benefits.

I owe my son an apology for not believing him, but unless he reads this, he isn’t going to get one.