The bank is covered with ivy and blackberries, and it is my annual task to cut back the blackberries so the ivy is encouraged to take over. Since it is one of my least favorite gardening activities, I tend to postpone the job, and this year was no exception. It had been a while since Lynn asked me to deal with them; it was on my to-do list. Finally, I made the decision to tackle them. I headed up the bank with pruners in hand and began snipping the blackberries back to the ground.
"It was bound to happen sooner or later." That is the thought that has been playing over and over in my mind. The whole idea wasn't foreign so when it did occur I really wasn't that surprised. A person can't go traipsing through the brush and dried vegetation like I do without expecting to run into the nasty buggers. "What?" you may ask, was I more-or-less expecting. That would be another encounter with wasps. It is, after all, that time of the year, the end of summer, when wasps become very aggressive, anti-social, and just down-right mean.
Learning about wasps was never on my need-to-know list, but learn I have. And they are wasps, rather than bees. Ron, another of my clients, specializes in moths, and when I tangled with them a year ago, he gave me that information.
What I have learned is that by the end of summer, the beginning of autumn, the worker bees have nothing left to do. They have fulfilled their mission of providing insects to feed the young grubs back in the nest. Their food of choice is often decaying fruit, rather than the protein they eat early on, and they handle nature's wine in the same way many humans do. They become mean drunks. In addition, the queen has stopped producing the hormone that keeps the wasp colony within the nest. They are on a final binge, as these worker bees die when the weather turns cold. And they are not nice.
Recently I wrote of my experience a year ago when I dug my weeding tool into a bee's nest tucked away in the ground. My body reacted to the angry bees quite significantly. Ever since that post and the recollection of that incident I have been on a kind of red alert. While Al Qaeda and Isis are definitely terrorist groups, these teensy, tiny, little black and yellow flying, stinging critters have the capability of striking their own kind of terror. Just thinking about them causes me to cringe.
On the ivy bank, I had clipped two or three blackberry vines back when I felt something bothering my foot. Looking down, I saw several of my least favorite insects flying around my feet. My eyes glanced up, and it was then I saw the hole in the ground and the wasps swarming out of it. Given my past experience, I am amazed at how calm I was. Another tidbit I have learned is that when one swats at them or stirs them up a chemical is emitted, a signal of distress, and those in the nest respond. They swarm, attack, and even chase. Wasps are able to sting repeatedly as well, so the potential is a recipe for disaster.
I calmly walked down the hill--yes, calmly. When I was a distance away, I killed the two left on my feet. One was trapped between my shoe and my sock, so he was stinging over and over again. I got in the truck, where I have a bee sting kit, and headed home, conscious of my breathing and physical response.
I'm certain you have heard situations described in terms of "good news, bad news"; however, this experience is only "good news, good news." Yes, I was stung, but part of the good news is that my body did not go into shock. While I have no desire to meet up with a family of wasps again, it is good to know that I was able to continue breathing, and I did not break out in hives. My response to the initial assault was a gift. Typically, I would become hysterical, swinging for all I'm worth. Additional good news is that I did not step on that nest. It was less than a foot away. Had I gone up the hill at a different angle I would have walked right on top of it.
My life is not in my hands. Once again, I was being watched over and taken care of by my Heavenly Father. While I continue to be apprehensive when I even think about wasps, and my foot swelled like a football, not a morsel of this encounter was a negative, only positive. I did end the day with "good news, good news." It goes without saying that the blackberry briars are still up on that bank. I think I'll wait for cooler weather. That, and for Lynn to have the nest destroyed.
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