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I have these neighbors… Maybe you know the type? They are the kind that brought about the phrase “good fences make good neighbors.” They like their space and don’t care for anyone overstepping their boundary marker. They are a bit brash, sometimes downright in-your-face, and not to be trifled with. On the bright side, they are only temporary, not fond of our winter chill. I have had one run-in with them that left me on guard, yet it also gave me a better appreciation of them. They are, of course, yellow jackets.
I love yellow stingy things as a rule. This is why I created a whole section on bees, after all. Few animals send me shrieking these days – I am still trying to reach this level of maturity around snakes, yet sadly I have a ways to go – but honestly it has never really occurred to me to be scared of bees and their kin. I’m not sure why, as it’s not like I have successfully avoided being stung – quite the contrary, in fact, and I have even discovered an allergy in the last decade. Yet I remember as a child listening, fascinated, as an older girl described being able to pet bees, and then trying it myself on the next ones I saw. Their plight in recent years has won me over even more, and at this point I let out a celebratory whoop each season as the first arrive.
This summer I was out mowing the grass late in the evening, near dusk, with our reel mower. My son wanted to help, so after cutting our hill I turned it over to him to tend the flat top area. Just as I walked off, I felt a piercing pain at the front of my ankle. I had on mud boots (ahem, snakes) and had to wrestle one off to find the wasp still stuck in my flesh. I flicked it free and it zipped off about ten feet, wheeled in midair, and then set a course for a fly-by. A little voice in my head wondered, “Aren’t these guys capable of multiple stings?…” But the yellow jacket only buzzed past me and disappeared. I would later learn I had just rolled the mower over its nest, and that was likely where it was hightailing it back to.
To make what turned out to be a long story short, I had another allergic reaction. Unlike the first (also a yellow jacket – I have never yet reacted to a bee of any sort), this was not immediate. The sting hurt, but we were headed in to read and go to sleep, so I had my ankle up and was resting, not swirling the venom through me, I suppose. By the next morning my foot was red, swollen, and itchy, and it only worsened across the day. By mid-afternoon I couldn’t bend my foot, the swelling was over halfway to my knee, and I was starting to feel just not quite right, so I called the local urgent care for their advice – which was to come down. It turned out I was beginning to have an anaphylactic reaction – yes, it can happen a full day later! – and required 2 shots, a pill, monitoring, and a week’s course of steroids and Benadryl. I limped out nearly $400 poorer, ankle still looking like an angry balloon, and greatly humbled by a little bug, a feeling that only intensified over what wound up being a much longer convalescence than I had ever imagined.
So that left me with the question – what to do about the yellow jackets? It was maybe a week later that my son, ever observant and tuned in to nature, spotted the nest in the backyard. I was torn. I am averse to pesticides and a huge proponent of letting the natural world be. Yet the damage wrought had left me shaken. I spent a night researching yellow jackets, trying to decide what to do. I had always heard yellow jackets are nasty, mean-spirited, and aggressive, too territorial and dangerous to coexist with. But, wait, let me think about that – isn’t that what most, if not all, animals might write about humans? I had to do a serious re-think. To begin with, I was fortunate. If I still used a whirring, roaring gas mower, there might have been a lot more than one I disturbed. Time of day surely played a part too, as well as the fact that area is thin of grass and doesn’t need much tending. If they want territory, I can probably spare that spot. I want territory too, and I take up far more, and fence it to boot. If someone came at me with blades, I’d likely be more aggressive than to take one jab at them – in fact, just the thought of wiping out a whole colony over one sting kind of points to me being the far more aggressive one, doesn’t it? I also remembered my resolution for this year: to be less reactionary. A fear-based, knee-jerk reaction is, in my experience, not when people typically make their best choices.
We decided to let them have their summer home. In a few months, they’ll be gone. In the meantime, their territoriality means I know where they are, as there won’t be another nest nearby. We put up his toy traffic cones around their hole. I had it pointed out to me laughingly that this wouldn’t keep them in their nest. No; it keeps us out. That’s their turf, and we need to be aware of it and not blunder over their fence. It has been a month, and we are living peacefully enough together so far. They occasionally pay a visit to rest on the laundry while I hang it, but that’s about it. I leave them a 3-foot berth or so when I mow, and we call it good. I’m still a little grumbly about the fact I learned they prey on bees – and the doctor bill certainly hit me where it hurt as I am notoriously cheap and unfortunately uninsured – but I am also finding myself, perhaps absurdly, glad I had a reason to get to know them better and to improve my ability to be a decent citizen of this patch of earth.
We choose to wasp.
In other news… Time immobilized has led to lots of creative endeavors! Please check out the Bookstore page to see the titles added across my downtime and pass the link along to anyone who might be interested… Consider every purchase a donation to our community urgent care!
— Stay safe, stay kind, stay curious,