5:00 a.m: two hours after returning from the wedding reception, and i'm wide awake, heart pounding, mind racing, still smelling of campfire and trembling from the cold while the lump in the futon gently erodes my spine with every toss and turn.
my poor addled brain, floundering in its own murky depths in search of sleep, instead inexplicably presents me with a weeks-old memory of wasps, and the tears begin to trickle.
my poor addled brain, floundering in its own murky depths in search of sleep, instead inexplicably presents me with a weeks-old memory of wasps, and the tears begin to trickle.
*****
it's a hot sunny mid-august day in the beeyard, perfect for doing our customary maintenance and hive inspections. our bee hives are relatively healthy and robust, but we're always on the watch for signs of intruders who try to rob the hives. at the third hive we see them. wasps. again.
in a strong hive, the workers can defend their home quite capably against the odd wasp or wax moth, or even mice, by stinging or by cooking the intruder with the combined body temperature of many bees clustered around it, but take a bit of work and our bees have already encountered so many challenges this year...
"fuck off," i whisper to the wasps, quite conversationally. "crunch!" they say, and "craaackle" as they meet the business end of my hive tool. i frown at the blobby brown mess of legs and exoskeleton, and wander off to sit in the long grass, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction that mounts slowly for weeks before being resolved.
in a strong hive, the workers can defend their home quite capably against the odd wasp or wax moth, or even mice, by stinging or by cooking the intruder with the combined body temperature of many bees clustered around it, but take a bit of work and our bees have already encountered so many challenges this year...
"fuck off," i whisper to the wasps, quite conversationally. "crunch!" they say, and "craaackle" as they meet the business end of my hive tool. i frown at the blobby brown mess of legs and exoskeleton, and wander off to sit in the long grass, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction that mounts slowly for weeks before being resolved.
*****
it was a lovely wedding, if you ask me. sort of a cirque de soleil of weddings, with something for everyone. vows exchanged under the shade tree in the backyard, a bouncy castle for the kiddies, hold'em poker for the grandparents and assorted elderlies, a popcorn vending cart, many cows worth of bbq'd steaks, a fire pit, lots of good company and some good old Regina style hospitality.
while poker players were whooping it up in the garage and the old friends gathered 'round the fire to reminisce, i found myself talking to a number of fascinating and brilliant people. the man who i'd found shouting at byron about different types of peppers calmly shared with me his philosophy for living a good life, the photographer let me look at his photos and ask questions about what he sees and learns about people when he photographs them, Don with the "I got dumped on Jerry Springer" shirt waxed sentimental about family and friends, and Jeff lent an air of sanity to my latest bout of save-the-world-before-the-apocalypse musings.
all the excitement and new people and mind-expansion and fresh prairie air must've jogged some gears into motion; by the time i finally fell asleep in an embarassing position with the bedroom door wide open to the high-traffic hallway, i'd realized why the killing of the wasps had upset me so much.
*****
i try to be a friend to nature. weeding is done by hand, rainwater is collected and used in the garden. vegetable waste is composted with great enthusiasm and helps our soil grow healthy plants. we have mice in the house? we live trap 'em and drive them to the park for relocation. spiders, centipedes, moths, pillbugs and other crawlies get removed to the back yard, and even slugs find a new home in the generation ship known as the neighbour's backyard. as i like to point out, we're all just trying to live, right? the slugs and i have different ideas about what the garden needs--they think it needs slugs to lick great gaping holes in the foliage, i disagree. on a small scale like this it's nothing to kill anybody over.
the thing that's bothered me about the wasps is that i killed them out of malice. if they were a big problem in our hives we'd be taking serious steps to handle them, but the fact is they're only a nuisance at this point. i've let my sympathy for the bees sway me from my "everybody's just trying to live" belief, leading me to feel justified in tampering with an environment that's already got a built-in control mechanism, and it doesn't feel good or right. may i never again need the visceral squelch as a critter's life is extinguished to remind me of how bad malice feels.
the gals get ready to kick some wasp ass
