The
first wasp of the season is something to note; it is a flying indication that
summer or something spring-like is near.
OK, the wasp may have been lured into the wide open though a freakishly
summery day, but it is a harbinger of warmer days ahead.
I
suppose it was my observation of the creature rather than a frantic flapping as
it approached my cup of tea and baguette after my customary swim than started
my jottings. Although I suppose it is
tempting fate to say it, I have never been stung by a wasp. Indeed, now I come to consider it, I don’t
know anyone who has been stung by a wasp either. I have been stung by a bee; but that was
because I topped a passing weed when walking the dog and a bee happened to be
on the plant head. I can hardly blame
the poor creature for having an instinctive reaction to being swept up in a
giant hand! And I can remember looking
at the tiny, still pulsating sting lodged in the fleshy part of my hand at the
base of my thumb and realizing that the ‘offending’ bee was now one of the
flying dead.
The reaction of people to wasps is one
that goes beyond the pain of the sting; for some people the fear of these
creatures is visceral and reduces them to gibbering wrecks. Mind you, I have seen the same reaction to
the appearance of a daddy-long-legs – and when has one of those ever managed to
pierce the skin of a human!
My aunt had an allergic reaction to wasp
stings. She was told that if she was
stung she should not panic, but go to a hospital immediately – but she was not
as neurotic about wasps than those who only had to endure a little local pain
if they managed to get it to attack.
Fear of wasps is not logical: yes, there is the possibility of a sting,
but you have to work fairly hard to get a wasp to attack.
The
post-swim wasp did come exploring me and had an expeditionary crawl along my
hand, and then it flew away. That has
always been my experience; wasps do not really want to expend energy and
valuable venom on a creature that is not (usually) going to drop down dead in
response. However, I do not go out of my
way to commune with wasps as my experience with the bee shows that even the
most placid ‘live and let live’ attitude can be compromised by accident.
And the last section of the poem asks the
question of definition as we usually find that approximation is enough for
action.
Pest?
I don’t kill wasps.
Don’t panic-swat with flailing hand,
infuriate with futile squeals.
I let them be.
And watch.
As they traverse the contours of my hands;
short, darting tongues through hairs to flesh
to drink in what I smell of: meat.
The gaudy abdomen, sting tipped
in sunshine’s gleam, is threat,
but why should they, whose prey
is ants and spiders, flies and Coke
take on a landscape smeared with taste?
For me the wasps are visitors:
they stay; they eat; they leave.
And no attack, no pain, just tickle-foraging
through hirsute undergrowth.
And flight.
Away.
An aunt of mine
did not kill wasps,
though they could easily
have finished her:
anaphylactic shock
could follow sting –
and death, of course.
But she did not
regard the summer months
as buzzing with mortality.
Discarded ice cream wrappers
and the overflowing bin
were Scylla and Charybdis
on an August stroll, for her,
but she pressed on as if the
sighted, noted, danger was not there;
walked though, and passed unscathed.
Our fear becomes attack:
provokes and redefines.
The wasp has a bad press
(and there’s resentment
at no ‘bee-death’ after sting)
but it’s entitled to defend when it’s ‘attacked’
It’s feared, though adder’s feared more,
and adders do not lurk for human strike,
but they will bite
if stepped upon.
And bite and sting are real,
though more in thought
than in lived life.
Pain is always possible,
but weapon’s definition
not offence.
Flight, not fight, the coloured patterns urge,
and gaudiness is warning: go or stay,
your choice,
and was the ‘wasp’
that started
all of this a hoverfly?
