Part I:
“Good News, Good News”
The bank is
covered with ivy and blackberries, and it is my annual task to cut back the
blackberry briars, encouraging the ivy to take over. Since it is one of my least favorite
gardening tasks, I tend to postpone the job, and this year was no exception. Procrastination, however, does reach its
limits, and I finally made the decision to tackle them and headed up the bank
with pruners in hand.
It is bound to happen sooner or later was the thought that had been playing in
my mind over and over. A person can’t go
traipsing through the brush and dried vegetation like I do without expecting to
run into the nasty buggers. “What are
you talking about?” you may ask. I’m
talking about another encounter with wasps.
It is, after all, that time of the year when wasps become even more temperamental,
aggressive, antisocial, and downright vicious than usual.
Wasps and bees
are not one and the same. Their
similarities begin and end with the fact they are both flying insects with the
capability of stinging.
Honey bees
are mild-mannered and social, living in large colonies. Not only do they pollinate 1/3 of the food we
eat, but they produce honey in their hives for themselves and for
human consumption as well. If one is
stung by a honey bee it is a defensive reaction, never an offensive one.
Wasps, on the
other hand, are naturally a more aggressive predator. There is nothing passive about them. Whereas honey bees use pollen as a source of
protein to feed their offspring, wasps provide meat for their larvae, classing
them as carnivores in my opinion.
By the end of
summer, the beginning of autumn, the workers 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 manner 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 workers
die when the weather turns cold. To say
they are not nice is a gross understatement.
Behaving with a definite spirit of aggression, they have no problem
expressing themselves in an attack and conquer fashion.
Wasps have
the advantage. Their nests are often hidden, tucked away underground, invisible to the naked eye, a virtual
landmine, and they know where we humans are long before we find them.
Last season I
drove my weeding tool straight into a wasps’ nest buried in the ground. Instantly my hand and forearm, my ankle and
lower leg were covered with them as they stung ferociously. When one swats at a wasp, a chemical is
emitted within 15 seconds, a signal of distress, and those in the nest
respond. They swarm, attack, and even
chase. Unlike honey bees which sting
once then die, a wasp can sting repeatedly so the potential is a recipe for
disaster.
My body
reacted to the sheer quantity of venom.
My breathing wasn’t affected, but my heart was pounding and, within a
matter of minutes, I had a full-blown case of head to toe hives.
I recovered
from that onslaught, but it was not an event I wish to repeat again. While Al Qaeda and Isis are definitely
terrorist groups, these tiny, black and yellow, flying, stinging critters have
the capability of striking their own kind of terror. The mere thought of them causes me to
cringe. Fear sat on my shoulder as I set
off to do the necessary work on the bank.
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. Glancing up, 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 composed I was.
I walked calmly
down the hill—yes, calmly. When I was a
distance away, I killed the two left on my foot. 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.” This experience, however, is only “good news,
good news.” Yes, I was stung, but part
of the good news is 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 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 at the
thought of wasps, and my foot swelled like a football, not a morsel of this
encounter was a negative, only positive.
The day ended 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 my client to have the nest
destroyed.
Part II:
“A Return to the Scene”
It had been
three weeks since I mowed. After
encountering the wasps’ nest on the bank of blackberries and ivy, I had
postponed the mowing job as I was uncertain what kind of nearby activity might
set them off. My client had called in a
professional to dispose of the nest, and she notified me she had checked
several times, and there was no sign of them.
As I unloaded
the mower from the truck I found myself thinking that I was returning to the
scene of the crime. While no crime had
been committed, I was returning to a scene, one which evoked unpleasant
memories.
I found
myself checking out of the corner of my eye as I mowed past the place where the
nest had been located. I’ve seen several
wasps flying around the past few days, and the cooler weather has dampened
their nasty dispositions, so the threat of an attack is past. And yet the memory lingers. I still have not tackled those blackberries
up on the bank.
Experiences
from our past, some of them from decades ago, have a way of sneaking into the
present, influencing not only the way we think, but how we live, holding us emotionally
and mentally hostage.
The mind is a
tricky beast to try to control. In fact,
I’d place it on an equivalency with the tongue when it comes to the degree of
difficulty to exercise control over.
That’s probably why people spend so much money on seminars, books, and
videos in an attempt to gain better control over their thoughts and subsequent
reactions and responses to those thoughts.
Oh, that it was that easy to simply train one’s mind.
Experiences
which have caused pain, sadness, turmoil, or grief have the potential of being
springboards. Even though that time in
one’s life will probably not be repeated, the memory and thought often is
enough to taint the present. It’s as
though we return to the scene each and every time a similar situation
occurs. I suspect that is why “they” say
when you get bucked off a horse, just get back on again, stressing the
importance of not allowing a single incident to define one’s future. Sometimes that is possible; other times it
isn’t.
A dental
experience, involving drilling without being numbed; three very serious bicycle
accidents involving my family; a drive on a logging road with the potential of
ending horrifically; my family swimming in a river, a deadly end averted—these
are just a few of the springboards in my life.
I know you have your own. Anyone
who has lived life does.
So how
does a person live in the present, not allowing the past to color it? Personally, I haven’t stopped going to the
dentist, and I have not forbidden my grandchildren from riding bicycles or swimming,
though I don’t take any sight-seeing tours through the mountains on logging
roads.
How does
one live without being affected or influenced by those experiences from our
past, dealing with a mental recurrence of a difficult time, a return to the
scene, as it were? There is no easy
answer, as each individual and each situation is unique. My personal experience, however, attests to
the effectiveness of dealing with a great one-on-one counselor, my Creator. He knows me better than anyone else, and
healing is possible.
In reflecting
on these things, I realized I have an abundance of experiences to draw from in
my life which make me an advocate of this approach. More than a few situations in life already
lived have the potential to ground me, bring me to a screeching halt, but for
the work of the One who made me. There
are many things from my past which no longer touch me or affect me or my life
because of God—His hand, His touch—in my inner psyche. It all takes place in the mind and the inner
being, you know.
We--He and I,
aren’t all the way through the wasp thing yet.
I will say, though, that I made it through this season with nothing more
than a swollen foot and a bite on the neck.
I am, however, considering skipping next August and September when the
wasps go on their rant. Thank God He
walks me through these things.