I was walking to work this morning with my head lowered in abject submission, my eyes scanning the ground for change or bits of discarded plastic, as usual. Anyway, on the sidewalk I noticed a bit of movement and, looking closer, I saw a honey bee and a wasp locked in some sort of struggle.
They were grappling with each other face to face, each trying to sting the other, but in their positions, neither could flex their abdomen far enough to deliver the barb. They rolled on the concrete, buzzing angrily. They sort of reminded me of those pathetic fights you sometimes see in front of bars or hair salons, where inexperienced or out-of-shape combatants just roll around on the ground with each other, cursing and grunting.
So I watched for a few moments, thinking that the wasp would probably win this one, eventually. Then, the most bizarre thing happened... the wasp changed his (her? its?) position and picked up the honey bee and flew away with it, slowly and noisily like a helicopter airlifting a VW bug. It careened slowly into some ivy on a wall, then buzzed away into a clutch of small trees, its captor buzzing in protest. Is this normal? Is this the way nature works?
I never really thought about the sort of interactions that must go on between wasps and bees. They don't seem to intermingle and, until now, I had never seem them hostile with each other. I assumed they would maybe have some sort of kinship, as they are both in the business of causing me to yelp and become irrational.
But, moreover, does this incident perhaps have some sort of portent? You shall see a red sun in the west, or a great bird will descend from the sky, you will be met by a mysterious stranger from afar, you will see a flying wasp carrying a honeybee, etc.
I ate Chinese food the other night, and the fortune in my cookie said, "You will receive wise counsel from a friend." Somewhere, perhaps in Omaha or Florida or Chile or Space, someone opened a fortune that said "You will see a wasp fighting a bee, and then the wasp will fly away with the bee, and after posting about it on your dumbass blog, you will get herpes and run over" and then a friend of theirs walked up and gave them some wise counsel. This is the way nature works.
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4 comments:
Perhaps this is why so many honeybees are disappearing mysteriously: the wasps are taking them.
Was it this wasp?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wasp_(LHD-1)
Because, holy shit.
That's a scary name for a boat. I bet the enemy (because we have so many seafaring enemies these days) would be less intimidated had it been called the USS Ladybug. Although a gun-laden warship called the USS Ladybug is pretty awesome.
you want sage advice from a "friend"? write that story down, man- thats some well told shit.
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