Zinger

It was a pretty morning. Warm as expected in late June. I fed the dog, read over my previous day’s work, got dressed in outdoor clothes—rumpled, worn yesterday.

Time for Bristol’s walk. She walks or trots. I roll. I have a small 4-wheel scooter for that purpose. It lives in a small shed near our barn. The routine is the same every day if it’s not raining. First I unplug it, then settle myself in the seat and turn it on.

Zap! Fire! A lightning bolt inflames my forearm, and flies away when I swing my arm violently sideways.

Red wasp. Now she’s zooming around, looking for another patch of skin to attack, preferably on my face. I swing at her frantically as I flee the building. How far will she chase me?

Not far. I stand outside, fuming. This wasp has been hanging around my scooter for a week. I know what that means. She thinks she should build her nest nearby.

I’ve been indulging a theory this year with respect to wasps. I leave them alone and expect them to do the same with me. I know the pattern they follow—a flyby if you are potentially a threat. I acknowledge it and go on about my business.

Wasps can recognize human faces, I’ve read. For a number of years I’ve rescued the dirt daubers that get trapped in our house. I have come to think they know I’ll do it—some of them know, anyway. If I’ve ignored them, they’ll do a flyby to remind me. And I respond by providing rescue. We get along fine.

I’ve been trying it lately with wasps. A nest of them has gathered under the eave of my mud room (which is a corner of the porch we enclosed for the washer/dryer).

They buzzed a repairman the other day, but they never bother me. I considered this more evidence of facial recognition. They’d never seen him before.

Back to the wasp that zapped me. I was filled with the fury that pain induces. Annihilation was the only appropriate response I could think of.

Wasp spray. I had to walk back to the house to get it. Suitably armed, I returned to the shed. First I sprayed two wasp nests on the inside of the door. Next, the yellowjacket nest on a wall I’d been coexisting with comfortably. (Sorry, fellas.)

Then I began going over the scooter. The scooter looked clean, of nests anyway. The wasp had been hanging around, as I said, and always on the right hand side of the vehicle. I looked under the shelves on the adjacent wall. I looked closely at the basket on the handlebars.

The nest was peeking out from below the handgrip, beside the accelerator lever. Invisible from the driver’s seat.

No wonder she had stung me. I had just taken hold of the grip where the nest was attached.

She was on the nest when I covered it in spray foam. I have mixed feelings now, but right after it happened obliteration was all I could imagine.

Pain evokes that kind of focused killing response. It’s the selfprotecting instinct that is most basic to us—a response of the human animal. Revenge plays its part as well.

The wasp had built her home in the wrong place, but she was merely protecting it and her eggs.

My response was overkill. It does make one think, given all the war talk these days.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, “This Familiar Heart,” is available at The Fayette County Record office and bookstores, on and offline, everywhere.