When I say we are at war with the bees, this is a lie. All honeybees, carpenter bees, and chubby little bumbles are welcome here.
But wasps can get fucked.
We consider briefly coexisting with the wasps. Yellowjackets are pollinators after all, and perhaps their presence is useful in this new landscape.
But then one stings Dan. Okay, perhaps forgivable, the wasp was riled up by Likely, after all. Who drew first blood here? It is hard to say, so perhaps it is best to make peace.
Then a wasp infiltrates our most sacred of defenses, aka our front door.
That is an act of war.
Because Dan is allergic, it is up to me to fight the wasp. This is what marriage is, deciding who fights the wasps. I don’t remember which part of our vows I agreed to be the wasp fighter, but given my long history of murdering animals out of necessity, it seems only right that I assume the mantle.
Armed with only a fly swatter and the belief that I am an all-powerful wasp assassin, I walk up to our loft and wait for the enemy to come closer.
Meanwhile, we are trying to get a cell phone booster installed so that we might enter the 21st century instead of languishing in the early half of the 20th with our sarsaparilla candy and desire to keep women from voting. A nice man named Charles is installing this booster while Dan directs him and simultaneously tries to avoid my wasp nemesis, who is actually Dan’s wasp nemesis, and perhaps in another life me and this wasp could have been friends but in this life he is a threat to Dan and therefore I hate him because marriage is also squashing enemies in each others’ names. Our doula holds the baby, and Likely is locked away in the bedroom because she just wants to bark at Charles for no reason other than she never misses an opportunity to be annoying.
All in all, a very regular day.
The wasp is very smartly staying in one corner of the house, far away from me and my vendettas. But I am a wasp assassin, and I wait patiently for him to come closer, and soon he changes directions, and comes closer, and closer, and holy fuck that is a very big wasp, I do not want to be a wasp assassin, perhaps I could have a better title like fat bird friend? But this title would mean I would have to explain to people that I am friends with fat birds, not that I am fat and a friend of birds, and given my status as only a few weeks postpartum, this would cause a lot of raised eyebrows and people saying, “Are you sure it’s not the second one?” And I would say OF COURSE IT’S NOT THE SECOND ONE but it would be a lie, it is also the second one.
Wasp assassin it is.
As he gets closer, I realize this is not a wasp at all. Nope, a fun fact about North Carolina is that it is home to European hornet, and just hornets in general. The difference between a wasp and a hornet is that a hornet is a very large wasp. That’s all, that’s the only difference, it is a wasp but bigger. I do not believe that I have coexisted with hornets.
AND I AM NOT ABOUT TO START. If I had one of those COEXIST stickers handy, I would hold it in front of the hornet and slowly set it on fire so that he really got the picture, even though he’s a hornet and he should just know I disapprove of his general presence. So I am now a hornet assassin.
I stare at the hornet and he stares at me probably, it is hard to tell because he is a hornet. He flies closer, and I ready my weapon, which is a $0.25 fly catcher. Charles calls from downstairs, “Are you still trying to get that wasp? He’ll probably just fly out if you let him.” Charles is a very nice man but he does not understand that Dan’s life is at stake and now so is my reputation as a hornet killer. I have already started building my hornet killing business in my mind while waiting for this hornet to get close enough for me to slap him out of the air like the little hornet garbage that he is.
I raise my fly catcher, he flies closer. I tense like a very cool mountain lion ready to attack something in a very cool fashion. The hornet comes within striking distance and JESUS IT IS SO BIG AND HORRIFYING I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS are the words that are running through my head, but of course because I am a natural born killer, I slap him out of the air like the hornet garbage he is, and so hard that his little head gets caught in my fly catcher, and I am simultaneously proud of myself and wanting to throw it at Dan’s face and scream like a little baby while running in circles flapping my hands.
I do not run in circles. Instead I hold my kill triumphantly aloft. Everyone cheers, and by everyone, I mean Charles and Dan say, “Nice,” in the way that dudes always do when someone kills something, and then go back to installing their antenna. I celebrate my victory internally by naming my future hornet-killing business We Kill Hornets, because you really want to keep it simple when it comes to bug-killing businesses.
I am thinking about what level of attractive I’d like my secretary to be when I remember that when you squish a wasp, it releases pheromones that anger the rest of the wasps, and will attract other wasps to come and attack you. I glance down at Dan and Charles, who are preoccupied with their antenna, and casually dump the hornet in the trash and run outside with it casually saying ew ew ew ew before chucking it into the trash can and scanning the air for what I assume is a Pearl Harbor level of flying insects intent on kamikaze stabbing me in the face, but fortunately the only sound outside is that of the idiot cardinal flying into our car window again because Dan is worse at killing things than I am.
It turns out that this year is the worst year for yellowjackets and other stinging insects, and it has something to do with climate change, so there is another thing we can look forward to, a burning planet filled with bees.
The Wasps
I can assure you, the wasps are secretly planning a Pearl Harbor offensive this very moment