I can count on a few things happening every year, like clockwork. My pet’s vaccinations. My birthday. A month where I want to drink anything but Coke. A month where Coke is the only thing I want to drink. Some life-altering event that happens on a Monday, then I have to go into work on Tuesday like nothing ever happened.
And wasps.
Without fail, no matter where I live, wasps will follow. They crop up suddenly, sneakily, buzzing in from some unknown shadow and nesting themselves in some unknown corner of my patio that I never would’ve notice if it weren’t for the tiny cells in a shell akin to a brown paper bag cropping up a little too close for comfort.
And, usually, every year I tear it down.
There’s a family history of being allergic to wasps. By that, my father is allergic: if he gets stung, he breaks out into hives and ends up needing to go into the hospital. At least, that’s how it was when he was younger, he told me. He hasn’t been stung since, mostly because of how much caution he and the people he loves takes when it comes to making sure not a single wasp so much as looks at him.
It might be hereditary. Might? I never took a test nor have I ever been stung. But I still live as cautiously as he does, wary of every wasp that decides to make it’s way around my vicinity.
So, every year, I tear down the inevitable wasps nest that makes it’s way to my home. The process is simple: get one of those instant-kill bug sprays that shoots 20 feet in front of you, aim it directly at the nest, drench it, and watch as the wasps flop out of the cells and twitch on the ground. (It always fascinated me how a tiny, marble-sized nest could hold, like, five of those buggers in it.) Then, knock down the nest, kick it off my porch, and live to see another day.
There would always be a deep sense of satisfaction while I did this. Like I had triumphed over some invading species, some aliens or a last boss villain. Something threatening. Something that could kill. Kill or be killed, the survival of the fittest, all those hollow words you hear in books and science class.
I’d read about ways to detour wasps from your home so this didn’t need to be an issue every year. Setting up a brown, crumbled paper bag to make them thing another brood had already settled there. The problem was I’m very forgetful, and by the time early spring would come, I’d already find a new wasp settling themselves near my home.
Including this year.
Now, I had started to reach a point this year where I assumed the wasps would finally let me be. I hadn’t seen any scouting out the perimeter, searching for the perfect place to make what be their eventual graves. I’d completely forgotten about the existence of wasps, actually, considering I’ve had about seven other things on my plate that I’d been fretting about instead.
Until, one day, I saw it.
Right by my window, underneath a hanging jar with fairy lights inside that I’d light every night, was a nest. A good sized nest, at that. About as long as the wasp that was clinging besides it.
Three weeks. That’s usually how long it takes for a wasp to build a nest that size. How did I manage to miss this thing for three weeks? Three weeks of walking past it everyday, going to and from work, taking my dog on a walk once or twice a day, going to the store, cleaning out my car, filling a cat bowl that was a mere foot away from it. Being in such close proximity to this nest for three weeks as this little wasp built it’s new home in possibly the most inconvenient spot I’ve seen for a wasp nest (how did it even manage to get it to stick on glass?).
Most years, I’d freeze up and pencil in an extra trip to the store to get the bug spray I needed to eradicate it. But this year, I sighed and grumbled. Because this happens every year, without fail. “God, now I have to get some bug spray, and jump around like a ninja while I take out this nest…”
And then I really started to look at it. Because the window it was by was conveniently where I put my desk a month ago, so while I worked, I had a clear view of this little wasp and it’s little home.
And I still continued to brush past it as I went to work.
And I still filled the outdoor cat bowl just a foot away from it.
And I still put my trash on my porch in preparation of taking it to the dumpster.
And I still kept doing things that involved me coming a little too close for comfort near it. And the wasp just…kept doing it’s own thing. Whatever it is a wasp does to build it’s nest, rubbing it’s little legs together and flapping it’s little wings. Occasionally, it would fly away, opposite of the door, and hours later it would come back and nestle itself back on it’s home. No doubt laying eggs, building a colony. But it was doing so quietly, politely, without worrying about what I was doing nearly as much as I was worried about it.
I guess it was used to me. I mean, I was here first.
You read and hear all the time about how wasps nests need to be taken care of the minute you see them. “Wasps are a threat!” You’ll no doubt hear. “They’re vicious blood-thirsty killers who will strike you down the minute they see you! They’re a threat to your FAMILY and your PETS and they will DESTROY THE WORLD.”
And most years, I believed in that fear too. Yet, this year, I can’t help but look at this little guy and find some comfort in seeing a constant in my life who’s minding their own business, doing their own things within my reach.
I mean, I haven’t done anything to it that warrants defense, after all. I didn’t even know the thing existed until not too long ago. It probably knew about me all that time, because I’m a noisy human living in a giant brick square with a loud dog who feeds the neighborhood cats. So it got used to me. It doesn’t have any reason to fear me because I haven’t given it reason to. I haven’t threatened it, just lived besides it, even if that coexistence was in ignorance. So it doesn’t attack.
Will it attack in the future? Will it build an army of dozens of wasps at its beck-and-call and decide to wage war on me in a month, two, three? Maybe. I don’t know.
But I don’t want to kill it.
So, to this day, it’s still there. Building it’s nest and it’s army. It might be stupid to not get rid of it and it’s nest yet, maybe all the claims that wasps are nothing more than red-eyed attackers who are indiscriminate in their fury are true, and I’m prolonging the inevitable day I’ll meet their wrath. But, for right now, this little guy is just doing it’s thing without caring what I’m doing. It’s lived this long without even so much as a threat to sting, or even look at me funny.
So why should my first instinct when I see it is to kill?