Mighty Sting, Mighty Purpose

Stay curious. One comes across that suggestion often when reading about keeping the brain and body healthy and active. Maintaining curiosity poses no problem for me. That’s not exactly the case with other “aging gracefully” tips like walking more and eating enough fiber. They take a bit of planning.

My curiosity, however, seems seldom to sleep. A file of “I wonders” periodically wins out over the sheep I attempt to count during restless nights, but that’s okay as long as the wonders don’t morph into worries.

The latest chase into the “I wonders” focused on wasps. While moving a hat hung on the front porch, I disturbed wasps active around a nest in its crown. I slung it into the yard for dealing with later. The question “What are wasps good for anyway?” surfaced.

I was upstairs shortly after that incident, so I plunked down to find answers in #19 of an encyclopedia set my parents paid a lot for back in the day. The three paragraphs in the entry provided no insight at all, nor were they enhanced by three fuzzy black and white photos. I’m spoiled by my own iPhone photos.

Back downstairs, I grabbed my laptop and skimmed through several search entries, realizing that back in 1965 my beloved encyclopedia had huge gaps in knowledge and maybe even had a thing or two wrong. Wasps have a place and purpose in our ecosystem after all.

This recent encounter was nothing like my first ever as a kid or the most painful one as a grown-up. I was about seven years old when stung while playing on my grandparents’ porch during a summertime visit from the city. I created quite a ruckus, but some ice cubes and a glass of Momo’s iced tea made it all better.

I’ve been aggravated by random stings over the years, added “knocking down nests” to my to-do lists and purchased plenty of cans of spray to make wasps more scarce. Eight years ago, a quick dive-by on the edge of my upper lip caused redness and astonishing swelling on my face and neck. I vamped up nest-destruction and investment in spray.

Back on my porch with wasp spray in hand, I hesitated, perhaps influenced by learning that wasps eat spiders. Wasps were circling around the spot where the hat had been, searching for their home. Switching the can for a picker-upper, I placed the hat close to its original spot but out of my way, and checked back. They have returned. Spiders, take that!

Now I’m dealing with another question. Why am I just now learning the good stuff about wasps?

One of these evenings, with a jumbo glass of iced tea in hand, I'll read thoroughly the sources I bookmarked to learn more about this tiny part of our fascinating world.