Waspinators

”No. You're not going to do this.”

It was 102°, but since I had chills from my cold I felt quite comfortable. A five foot Sicilian woman stood between me and the shed. I picked her up by the shoulders and moved her aside easily, stepping in to get the lawnmower.

The doors slid shut behind me as I moved boxes and rakes aside. I opened them and pushed past her, looking around and spotting where she'd “hidden” the container of gasoline on the other side of my car. Between bad weather and working with my bands, I'd let the lawn slide for three weeks. One more day probably would not have made a difference, but clogged lungs and a brain deprived of oxygen do not clear thoughts make.

She gave up and went in the house as I slowly made my way around to start with the backyard. As I crossed our jungle of a front yard, I noticed a lot of mounds of dirt, like ant hills, strewn about.




Closer inspection showed the holes to be huge, some as much as two inches in diameter. I wondered about mice or moles or some other kind of rodent, and I went back to ask my mom if she or my dad had dug holes to put in posts of some kind. She said she thought it was actually some kind of hornet, giving me another reason to reconsider my actions. Still, I pressed onward.

Weak from illness and feeling the heat, I took 45 minutes to do a half hour's worth of labor. I passed over each mound of dirt cautiously, and at one point I did see some kind of large orange wasp hovering. I froze until it suddenly zipped out of sight, and I completed my task unmolested. After helping my dad with a beam in our basement, I went online and, near as I could determine, identified the species as a Mud Dauber, what my friends and I referred to as “Mudwasps” when we were kids. The one I saw when I was cutting the grass was so large, it might as well have been Waspinator. So, I made the only logical decision someone with a fever and a lawn full of wasp holes could make on a ridiculously hot August afternoon. I went outside with my camera.

Even though the internet told me these things were not likely to sting, I still ran back in the house when one zipped toward me. Without the noise of the lawnmower to scare them off, they were a little friendlier. I say “they”, because while I had only seen one the first time, at least three were zipping around from nest to nest.

I took a few blurry shots, relying on my zoom lens and keeping my distance. The best time to shoot was when they'd land at one of the holes, but they didn't linger long. I couldn't see what they were doing, but I knew from my research that they bring spiders and other prey back as food for their offspring once eggs hatch. After a few minutes of not seeing any of them, I walked through the minefield of my lawn. Something shot past me like a meteorite, crashing in to the bushes. I raced across the lawn in time to see one of the wasps wrestling with a cicada twice its size. Both were vibrating and buzzing loudly, and the wasp seemed to win as it pulled its prey below a leaf. There was a deathly silence, and I thought about moving the leaf aside. I reached forward, and a cricket leapt from underneath, not wanting to be near the fight that had crashed near it. I decided to follow the cricket's lead and leaf...uh, leave well enough alone.





These creatures won't be here for long. Soon they'll move on, and their young will awaken to find a cache of dead insects. They'll feast, and move on themselves even as colder temperatures prevail. It was still a vicious sight to behold, formidable giant flying insects capable of tackling larger prey in midair. It might have been “interesting” to see how a sting would react with my current infection, but even if I wasn't waiting for my new job's medical insurance to kick in I'm fairly certain that would have been a terrible, terrible idea. At least in cartoons they're ultimately harmless and easily dispatched with...