A Day in the Life Cycle
Always remain still if a wasp approaches you. If you have to run away, do so in a straight line, without flailing your arms.
Cheryl is sweeping the outdoor deck just off the living room of her parents’ house when I hear her yelp. Her broom thwacks to the floor as she stumbles over a wicker ottoman, a side table overturns with a thump on her frantic flight back indoors. The door slams. Hobbling, cursing, she passes through the living room into the sitting room. Feet up, I peer over my book sipping coffee. I think maybe she’s thrown her back out again. The woman is prone to over-exertion. Whether it’s a 21-day fix or acetic acid cleanse, she pursues her goals with a single-minded passion and this morning’s passion is a spotless house. She sold it as a get-away weekend, this particular Saturday, not yet 9:00am. I place my mug on the ceramic saucer protecting the polished cherry end table and reluctantly fold my book.
Braced on an easy chair, Cheryl stands like a flamingo in her pink pajamas rubbing her foot, inspecting her toes as if each a secret rune, “It was just the one at first. Dropped to the deck – plop – motionless, a small sliver of a thing, like the nuts you miss your pie-hole with lying on the couch at home. I was about to sweep it away when another dropped – and another. Then they roused and attacked. Must be a nest underneath the wicker chair on the deck.” Cheryl pauses to catch her breath, upright now, searching my face for an appropriate level of concern. She bends again to spread her toes, “Shit, my toenail is cracked.”
Wasps’ behavior changes in late summer as their preferred food shifts from sugars to proteins. Because of this, you will more likely encounter them wherever food is consumed outdoors and around garbage collection areas.
Cheryl hunts for aspirin as I take my coffee outside to my in-laws’ deck, the last day of September. Stuck to my bare feet are bits of dried leaf and dust. The deck varnish is faded, faintly clingy. Two of the three wicker furniture pieces – a sofa and two chairs – are still covered with an off-white tarp. The tarp is flecked with black mold. On the deck’s wood rail, a glass jar collects a jumble of stiff-legged carpenter bees, a kind of mass-grave menagerie. High in a corner, an orb weaver is fang-deep digesting what appears to be a shriveled leaf. Closer inspection reveals a collapsed grasshopper, protein juices extracted. An outdoor thermometer with a painted pinkish cardinal already reads 76F.
The deck screens, removed years ago, have been replaced with roller shades which are up. The air is a heavy, unwelcoming haze. The early morning lawnmowers come and gone, whir in the distance. Far below, a grand view of a lush green swath, the 16th fairway, yellow and overgrown at its edges, and across the fairway valley a ridge of hardwoods rises, the green canopy revealing few homes across the way. This side of the fairway guarding a bunker, a towering pine splits the view in half. A pine limb bends under the weight of a black crow perched thirty feet off the ground, eye-level with the deck; its beak open, breast heaving, as if winded.
Summer is beyond its welcome here in north Georgia.
Beside the wicker chair, a small tarp is crumpled in a heap. I invert the overturned, stone-mosaic side table and set my mug, about to crouch to inspect the chair’s underbelly, when something gives me pause. I see discoloration through the wicker under the armrest: a circle of darkness. Movement along its perimeter. Further scrutiny reveals sinister insect perambulations: segmented abdomen, translucent wing, probing antennae. I step away to the wood rail. A wasp flies in from beyond like a fighter jet to home-base after predawn maneuvers. For a moment, the wasp seems to size me up – hovers, dangling legs akimbo – before it descends to rendezvous beneath the chair arm. The crow caws loudly, the limb bouncing a little as it lifts off. Dismayed, I take my mug inside.
Removing a wasp nest is a complex process and requires professional help.
The doorbell rings. My wife has hired our cleaning service – Veronica, to be precise, married mother of three, documentation status unknown – to vacuum, wipe, dust, and sweep her parents’ house. Cheryl’s parents are due to return in a few days from their summer residence in Wisconsin and Cheryl wants the place bug- and dust-free for their return. Cheryl and I spend a couple weekends here every summer. Cheryl’s dad cancels the cable which makes for tranquil summer evenings spent reading save for the incessant window patter of large insects drawn to the lamp light. Not all of the attempted intrusions fail. A month earlier, Cheryl had spent an hour vacuuming an insect army of pill-bugs, centipedes, and lady bugs, so to avoid a repeat this weekend she’s called in reinforcements. I open the front door and ask if they found the place okay. Veronica smiles and says, “Is quiet back here.”
Many years ago, Veronica had cleaned our house all by her lonesome before adding her husband and sometimes her sister to her crew soon thereafter. All this time Veronica’s had the key to our house every other Tuesday, and this is the morning Cheryl and I discover that Veronica’s husband’s first name is Estevio.
The coffee pot is empty and rinsed. We’ve had our bagels and fruit. It’s 10:00am and Estevio is in the living room high on a ladder with a dust broom. Cheryl looks up and offers him a bottle of water, “Estabio, am I saying that right, Estabio?” She rhymes his name with Fabio. “Estabio, are you finding a lot of cobwebs?” He laughs, “Chess, ma’am. We’ll be here ’til midnight.” I am concerned that Cheryl had undersold the size of her parents’ house when she originally pitched the job to Veronica. Veronica gave Cheryl a modest quote and I worry we’re not paying enough, uneasy placing the bargaining burden on Veronica.
I don’t talk to Veronica much. I once asked about her kids, while all the DACA-stuff was in the news, prying a little. DACA never came up, but she shared that her oldest girl, a senior in high school, was unsure of what to do upon graduation. In early August the first week of school, I asked a passing counselor in the hall what advice he might give to a Mexican couple with a high school senior, regarding life after graduation. The counselor was harried with schedule changes and quickly offered up the Latin American Association’s website. The site lists immigration services such as local and national job opportunities, but underwhelmed, I chose not to share, having a difficult time imagining this a valuable nugget. Surely, Veronica’s daughter has access to a computer and could google for herself.
Cheryl checks that Veronica has the supplies she needs – Bona wax, swiffer pads, dust rags – and that Estevio knows how to use the built-in vacuum system. She urges me to the garage to look for wasp killer. In the two-car garage, there’s space to walk around Cheryl’s mom’s car; the hood is up, battery charging. I step over battery cables past a generator and search the wall cabinets. I find Amdro ant pellets, WD-40, Turtle Wax, Goo-Be-Gone, a bag of colorful tees, and a tray of two dozen or so used golf balls, all brands. I return to the kitchen empty-handed.
Tying her running shoes on a stool, Cheryl says, “Dad really needs to weatherproof. Could you get rid of the wasp nest? I don’t want mom getting stung. Mary Kay got stung when we were up here for girls weekend.” Veronica is filling a bucket with water and looks surprised, unsure who Cheryl is talking to. I show Veronica how to maneuver the kitchen faucet so it stops dripping.
Cheryl tells Veronica we’re going for a walk. As we leave, Cheryl says, “Be back in an hour. Don’t lock us out.” Veronica giggles hesitantly, says alright, but I’m not sure if she understands. I grab a key.
Daughter bees inherit three-fourths of their genes from their mother; therefore, have a higher genetic predisposition to staying at home and caring for the hive.
The grass does not grow so well near the garage, swept bare by the lawn service, exposing dirt and tree roots. Bees emerge slowly from a hole in the ground. Cheryl suggests mulch. Some Thanksgivings ago, a copperhead crawled through this same ground, formerly overgrown with ground cover and crabgrass. The family gathered on the driveway to find the copperhead curled near a car tire. Cheryl’s dad sliced the reptile in half with a spade.
We walk through the development past the 16th tee box and pause on a road bridge over the Etowah River. Turtles bask on fallen logs partially exposed in the low wide river. Cheryl usually spots them first. The turtles seem alert to our presence even though it’s thirty feet down and they’re hundreds of feet upstream; if we linger they almost always slide off into the water. It’s disappointing to disturb their sunning, but a pleasure to see them paddle beneath the sparkling water, bumping gently downstream in their evolved glides.
Further downstream, there’s a small riverside park where a few untended community garden boxes grow weeds near a picnic table and a large wooden rack for a beat-up canoe. Bat houses hang high, nailed to pines. There’s an informational display about native bird species. Birds and bats are nature’s pest control and pollination service provided to us free of charge.
We walk up and down Bear Paw Ridge and after an hour we’re back in the driveway where Cheryl inspects the rose bushes near the mailbox. “Mom always asks about her plants. Green, no blooms though.” The rose bushes are healthy, but the deer are back, we saw them the night before on our drive in at dusk. Cheryl’s mom scoffs when we say we miss the deer ever since the homeowner’s association had to hire a deer hunter to protect the homeowner’s outdoor plants. A strong case can be made against over-browsers: rose-bush devourers, tick-borne disease carriers, shrub-nesting-bird disturbers. But who is to blame for hungry deer? They were here first. And with our land development, we’ve eliminated their predators – the wolves, bobcats, and before them, the Native American arrows that thinned the herd for food and hide – and we’ve carved up their habitat, increasing the edges where deer prefer to feed. Then we landscape those edges with the equivalent of deer salad bars, all variety of deer-delectable flowering plants, and fret about them trespassing against us and our blossoms.
I learned of reconciliation ecology teaching high school environmental science. The goal is to live with species, accommodate rather than kill; reconcile developed spaces rather than conquer. Like hanging bat houses. Or landscaping with deer-proof plants. Of course, this all sounds great in a book in the classroom. There’s a price to pay – reconciliation is expensive and less effective. And a decline in aesthetics, the forfeiture of pretty blooms in favor of unattractive deer-proof plants. Still, I find more choices than I expected. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists over 80 deer-resistant plants, flowers, and shrubs. Not that all 80 species of plant would survive at your latitude. Another hurdle, I thought, many listed species sounded tasty: Armoracia rusticana, Artemisia dracunculus, and Asparagus officials, better known as horseradish, tarragon, and asparagus. Aromatics. Apparently, deer find them smelly and stay away. Then again, a deer-proof plant is a relative term – I imagine even horseradish smells lovely to a famished deer.
I wipe my head as I enter the house. Estevio sees me and asks, “Hot?” He’s sweating too and I misunderstand, thinking he’s telling me he’s hot, so I turn the a/c down. He says, “No, no, is ok, I need to lose weight.” Cheryl tells Veronica we’ll return in a couple hours, we’re going into town to shop and eat lunch.
A crow made fun of him for not having a brain, and the Scarecrow took it very, very personally. When Dorothy asks him if he thinks a field of flowers is beautiful, he says, “I suppose so. When I have brains I shall probably like them better.”
On our drive into downtown Dahlonega, we stop for gas. The mini-mart contains an impressive selection, no less than three tall spray cans to choose from: House & Garden, Ant & Roach, and Flying Insects. I wield the Flying Insect spray can like a police baton. It’s hefty. I place it on the counter with a small box of aspirin for Cheryl. Her toe hurts and now her head. On the aspirin box, I read the active ingredient is salicylic acid. Its chemical compound is derived from the bark of the white willow tree.
We detour around the quaint downtown square and park three blocks away in the public overflow lot. The square is cordoned off with orange barrels and hay bales for a criterium bicycle race. Pitched about are bicycle supply tents. You can get a massage, vitamins and protein powders, or purchase cycling gear. Under one tent, very lean people recline with their lower torsos encased in a kind of fitted body bag. Some sort of muscle rejuvenator. It’s the weekend of the Six-Gap Century Ride. Tomorrow, Sunday, are the 50- (Three Gap) and 100-mile rides. Today is the criterium. The cyclists race around a one kilometer loop that winds through the heart of downtown. The race is timed, 45 minutes of hammering, then the bell lap and out-of-saddle sprint to the finish in front of the Holly Theater marquee.
At first I suspect the hay bales exist as a buffer for riders that fail to navigate the hairpin turns, like runaway ramps for truckers on Appalachian highways. I am reminded of a picture I took at my last bicycle criterium in another north Georgia town. The picture is of my nephew Kyle’s bare back, stripped of his Kean college racing shirt receiving care under a medic tent, hair tied in a ponytail, a road rash in full strawberry bloom across his upper back and shoulder after an aggressive rider clipped his front tire, crashing him illegally. Kyle’s day was done as was the aggressor’s, pulled from the race a few laps later by a race official.
Then I recognize the hay bales and pumpkin decorations for what they are, props for the Lumpkin County scarecrows. Every fall, the Dahlonega Woman’s Club sponsors a scarecrow contest. Schools, businesses, and restaurants throughout the whole County participate. Entry fees are donated to the Lumpkin County Library. This year, the scarecrow theme is music. I like the scarecrows, but their life-like forms are disconcerting. It always takes a second to distinguish the straw-stuffed, banjo-wielding scarecrows from their all too real, lesser-fortunate counterparts: the poor, the mentally-ill, drug-addled or disabled. Or the plain unlucky and unemployable – they’re the County residents who migrate into town on special occasions from their humble residences in the county outskirts to scavenge the dumpsters and sidewalk garbage cans for recyclables. Cheryl’s father tells stories of his philanthropic forays into the rural heart of the community on behalf of the Catholic Church to offer a critical bill pay here, a pre-paid gas card there. The downtown square is not like NYC or ATL; the unfortunate are unobtrusive and few. You can pretend they’re not there.
There’s one now, a gaunt figure standing on the sidewalk with a microphone in her hand in front of Gustavo’s Pizza; she adopts a proselytizing posture near some restaurant patrons waiting outside for a table. She is too thin, something is wrong with her hair; long and wavy but stiff, dyed raven-black, like the hollows under her eyes. Her painted lips do not move. Markings on a small placard stuck in the ground at her feet spell out the scarecrow’s name: Scary Cher.
Without insect pollination, agriculture would fail.
Opposite Gustavo’s, on the other side of the Gold Rush Museum, we have lunch at Capers on the Square, our new favorite restaurant in Dahlonega. The loquacious owner is chatting with diners as she greets us at the door of the cozy dining space. I overhear her say she’s from Florida by way of Greece. She’s been asked by the residents of Achasta, the golf course community where Cheryl’s parents live, to take over their defunct clubhouse restaurant. Cheryl orders the sesame-crusted tuna with kalamata tapenade and I get the Capers salmon sandwich. The owner recommends the roasted eggplant to a man seated behind us. The man is none other than Paul Thomas, proprietor of Paul Thomas Chocolates whose storefront is a few doors down from Capers. Paul Thomas’s companion is seated so close I could lean over and wipe my hands on her sugar-powdered smock. Mr. Thomas, I’m guessing in his 70s, has the wizened, contented look of a man who’s found joy in his work. That, or his glass of red wine. His chocolate store also sells local art and a miniature train chugs around a track mounted high on the wall. He orders a second glass of wine. Seeing a kindred spirit, Cheryl says, “Your store is my husband’s favorite on the square. It’s your store after dinner for dessert. Our chocolate bill exceeds our dinner’s.” Paul asks our favorites. Cheryl likes the truffles and pecan caramel turtles. For me, it’s peanuts, almonds, and pretzels – all about the crunch and salt. Paul says “The double-dip is key.”
“What’s your favorite?” Cheryl asks. Paul stands, holding forth his wine glass like a eucharistic gift, “The almond butter pralines are divine.” He drains the glass and shares his commitment to quality, “I use the best milk and cocoa powders ground to less than .03 millimeters.”
Cacao beans are not actually beans, but seeds of a fruit whose white flowers grow directly from the bark of a tree whose botanical name, Theobroma cacao, translates to “food of the gods.” The chocolate tree thrives only in tropical regions. In the tropics, the climate is stable, a reliable rainfall, and narrow range of seasonal temperature swings. This promotes both plant and insect species who’ve evolved specialized niches to compete. One such specialist is a tiny fly in the no-see-um family, one of a select few known to pollinate the cacao flower. It’s size is a competitive advantage. Most pollinating insects like bees are simply too large to infiltrate the small cacao flower and extract the nectar and pollen. Some call this highly-evolved, tiny fly the ‘chocolate midge’.
If you had the notion to take advantage of the billion dollar chocolate industry and plant a grove of chocolate trees in the U.S., good luck. Florida is the only state in the lower 48 that dips into the tropical zone. Even in south Florida it can freeze, abruptly ending your tree growth, bean yield, crop profit, and feel-good lifestyle in that order. And you haven’t even yet considered whether a suitable, native midge species exists, capable of meeting the chocolate flower’s stringent pollination requirements. Although, this challenge has been overcome in other non-native tropical regions. Beyond Central America where the cacao plants originated, the potential profits from the chocolate industry has incentivized other tropical growers into business.
Let’s say you’ve got the climate and the gnat, you’re still not there. If you’ve ever walked into a gnat cloud, you know the best escape is into direct sunlight. A chocolate tree grove requires taller trees surrounding it. Gnats thrive in the shade.
Cheryl asks if I’d order my sandwich again. I wet my napkin in ginger ale and dab the aioli stain on my shirt, “Bun’s good, salmon’s a perfect temperature, and the sun-dried tomatoes you’d love, a little tangy for me.” We pay and Cheryl tells the server, “We may be back for dinner.”
We walk past an art gallery, a Cajun restaurant, a clothing shop, before reaching the red door storefront of Paul Thomas Chocolates. Up the stairs into a heavenly scent. “No Paul,” Cheryl whispers, “Bet he keeps a cot in the back.” One-day, same day treats are often on offer, exotics like chocolate-covered bananas or oranges. Once, bacon. A chipper North Georgia college student behind the display counter places paper wafers filled with amorphous goodness upon a weigh scale. With every piece I order, the chocolates crowd together, like lily pads on a pond competing for sunlight. I ring up over $50 on peanut and almond clusters and three pre-packaged boxes of double-dipped pretzels, a dozen to a box. Cheryl’s next. She points out her order one pecan turtle and truffle at a time. The college student wraps the pieces and turns a flat piece of cardboard, origami-like, into an elegant burgundy box, the final touch an elastic gold band stretched around it. The student asks if I’d like a volume shopper discount card. The model train chugs along, hugging the wall above as we exit. Cheryl asks to carry the bag to the overflow parking lot.
Even with the use of modern pest control, insects partially contaminate most agricultural products upon harvest and on the way to market. From canned corn to curry paste, from premium coffee to peanut butter, most foods contain insects.
As we walk to the car, I ask, “Remember fig newtons?” hoping Cheryl’s in the mood for science. “Did you know that tiny tropical wasps burrow into the fig fruit and lay their eggs inside?” Cheryl removes a pecan turtle from the bag and bites the shell in half – an unclean break – drawing a long strand of caramel from gooey insides. As she twirls the strand, I continue, “When the male eggs hatch, the male larvae dig tunnels, eating out the heart of the fruit. Many of the males die inside, but the female larvae follow the tunnels, exit the fruit with fully-formed wings, and carry pollen to the next fig plant.
Smacking her lips, Cheryl says “Dee-lish,” and drops the leftover pecan half into the bag with a willpower akin to roving deer who’ve evolved to nibble – as opposed to devour – and move on, returning only after the nibbled bits have grown back. “Is that why fig newtons are so crunchy? Gross. Are you telling me that mom packed my school lunch all those years with larvae?”
“Perhaps. More likely, the crunch is seeds. Enzymes in the fig digest the dead wasp. The wasp carcass assimilates into the fruit like pecans assimilate into you. Ecologists call the relationship between fig plant and fig wasp mutualistic – beneficial to both.”
“Like us, right baby?”
“Right. On Bon Appetit’s website I found a page for ‘twenty-three figtastic recipes’ and a claim that ‘biting into a fresh, ripe fig is one of summer’s greatest joys.’
Cheryl licks her fingers and says, “I want a fig.”
“And you know what else is a thing? Dark chocolate-covered figs. An idea for Thanksgiving.”
Wasps release a pheromone upon death that alerts the others to attack.
We park in the driveway next to Veronica’s Camry. I take our chocolate bounty into the kitchen and see Veronica wiping the sink. Veronica had estimated a five hour job. Ultimately, the job takes seven, working non-stop, without a break. Cheryl adds more twenties to the pile of cash that’s been stacked on the kitchen counter since before lunch. As Estevio packs his cleaning supplies in the Camry’s trunk, I tell Veronica ‘bueno trabajo’ which translates roughly to me congratulating myself for a job well done. Veronica smiles kindly and says thank you. Cheryl surveys the house, “Don’t the floors look nice?”
The house is quiet again. We read and nap a couple hours until 6:00pm, then ready for dinner out.
Cheryl is downstairs showering. I’m already dressed, cologne-spritzed, out on the deck again. It’s quiet. The autumnal sun sets the greens and yellows to glow. At attention on the end table, the Flying Insect spray can is cold erect metal. My readers are inside and I cannot make out whether to shake or not. I have not done this in awhile. Everyone knows the best time to spray is dusk – all wasps accounted for, returned to the nest, inactive. Mass destruction, the operating principle. I put the Flying Insect can down, and with my phone in selfie-mode, I reach under the arm of the wicker chair the way a mechanic might extend a mirror to inspect a car’s undercarriage. It’s dim, but I count six wasps, motionless. Hardly worth the effort. The honeycomb is the opposite of intimidating: it’s small, a good-sized lemon cut in half, hanging like an open umbrella protecting its precious wasp progeny. Here lies the fig pollinator; predator of beetle; controller of all populations caterpillar and katydid. I extract the phone, unprepared for the accidental glimpse of myself at such an unflattering angle: face-to-face with the middle-aged, double-chin of the grim insect reaper.
Back in the sitting room, I swipe my flesh away, tap the Safari browser app, search: Active Ingredients.
In a per acre study, American consumers outpace farms in their use of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides tenfold.
The active ingredient in domestic insecticides is permethrin. Permethrin belongs to a group of chemicals inspired by the pyrethins, a chemical produced naturally by the Chrysanthemum plant. This encourages me. The Pyrethum daisy is a species of Chrysanthemum that’s planted in gardens to deter bookworms.
Unfortunately, pyrethrins break down quickly, good only so far as stunning or disorienting an insect, which makes nature’s version of the chemical ineffective for mass use. Permethrin, on the other hand, is a pyrethroid, meaning pyrethrin-like. So, pyrethroids, while modeled on pyrethrins, are synthetic and way more potent. Pyrethroids are neurotoxins that kill on contact, stopping the heart. And they’re broad-spectrum, so they kill indiscriminately.
Permethrin is harmful to honeybees and fish, but land mammals are more tolerant. Commercially, it’s used in pet tick collars, insect bomb sprays, and head lice treatment. Permethrin-treated clothing kills ticks and mosquitos on contact. Permethrin was applied indoors near a window in an experiment where it was exposed to daylight. After 20 days, 60% of the permethrin that was applied was still on the surface. It does not evaporate easily when applied to surfaces. When people get permethrin on their skin, they may have irritation or tingling, burning and itching at that spot.
The opposite of struggle is not peace but total war. War is the attempt to end struggle once and for all. Rub out the competition. Flatten the hill of Sisyphus and blow up his stone with a one-megaton bomb. “Get ‘er done,” as the rednecks blazon on their trucks; “get closure” as their classier neighbors like to say.
I’ve been laughed at for pulling weeds in the lawn by hand. Over a decade ago, at Cheryl’s first house I had once sat in the middle of a quarter-acre of dense, healthy Bermuda. It took a couple hours to mow, releasing the emergency stop lever every two rows to empty the grass-catcher bag. Bermuda grows so well it’s hard to notice the weeds. Come fall, Bermuda goes dormant yellow while the broadleaf weeds keep photosynthesizing another month or so – what emerges across the sea of Bermuda yellow are broad-leaf islands of green, like coral reefs at low tide. My neighbor, a friendly guy ever-ready with household advice (a self-proclaimed gamer who worked in retail), had once laughed heartily after walking up, observing my little hand-pulled piles. Weekends, I’d see his bald head wrapped in soundproof ear-wear, traipsing around in full lawn-care regalia: work boots, gas-powered leaf blower strapped to his back or pushing a spreader full of fertilizer in pursuit of green lawn nirvana. But of course through his eyes, most eyes really, let’s face it, I was the fool, admittedly, engaged in my personal folly, I felt not unlike a goat farmer grazing his herd, eradicating kudzu from the south one bite at a time. Good intentions, perhaps; ultimately futile.
On my rear, sweating under a bright sun, I kept my environmental position to myself.
But if I could go back in time and peel my neighbor’s ear-wear from his head, I’d offer this defense: for one, there’s the liberation from chemical guilt, no run-off into waterways. Two, the more immediate liberation from skin rash although neither my neighbor nor I had frolicking children to protect. And three, pulling weeds can liberate from stress – peaceful, meditative, relaxing, particularly when, or especially when you forego the notion of complete, one hundred percent eradication as the goal. A triumph of method over result. The weeds would ultimately cease their chlorophyll production with or without me, blending back into the lawn on their own time scale.
I’ve been paid for spraying industrial pesticide. It was the mid-eighties, I was nineteen or twenty, home from college, hired as temporary summer help for the Township Road Department. I sat in the bed of a two-ton dump truck beside a big, rusty water tank and, box-cutter in hand, slashed open sugar-sized bags of a powdered insecticide – brand name, Sevin. I shook bag after bag as dust belched from the tank’s rusty mouth.
About that same time, the root cause of the infamous 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India was determined – a toxic gas leak at a pesticide manufacturing plant. The leaked gas (methyl isocyanate, produced by Bayer A.G.) was used in a process to make Carbaryl, the active chemical in Sevin. The explosion and subsequent leak killed thousands of people. The effects on the environment and human health are still being documented today.
More recently (2008) and closer to home (West Virginia), an explosion at a pesticide plant owned by Bayer CropScience, a Bayer subsidiary, killed two workers. A storage tank of methyl isocyanate located 75 feet from the point of explosion – while not the culprit this time – came perilously close to rupturing from a piece of equipment called a ‘residue treater’ sent flying through the air. Bayer board members announced they would cease use of methyl isocyanate in their pesticide-making processes.
A full-timer drove as I wrangled a leaky fire hose, spraying the Township’s crabapple trees infested with caterpillar tents until the leaves dripped, saturating the wormy tents and my work pants in the process. I do not remember wearing a mask or gloves, even a shirt. What I do remember that summer was a killer tan and a vague, unexpressed sense of invulnerability.
Do not seek shelter in a body of water, as the wasps will simply wait for you to re-emerge. Do not try to fool wasps by “playing dead”. They will simply continue stinging you!
I slap the Flying Insect spray can on my thigh and walk out to the deck a final time. I toss the spray can, rolling it off my fingers. On my knees now, I assume sprayer position. Beside the chair, I think of permethrin contamination, all that interstitial wicker. I’d have to hose, scrub, drip-dry. No time for all that. My thoughts waffle between two extremes: Cheryl’s poor mother stung by territorial wasps or permethrin-saturated wicker, neurotoxins seeping into her pores. My heart rate’s a little high. I change grip, no more perfume tester – palming the can, my fingers wrap the core like a spike. I take one last look at the obstructions in the chair’s frame; I’ve got a clear, though awkward, shot: a sidearm motion, like skipping a stone. From my squat, I commit and lead with the can’s butt-end, driving it hard into the chair’s underbelly, the can snags and just that fast across my face three slivered bullets shoot from under the chair like tiny heat-seeking missiles from under a fuselage. Time slows and I cannot uncoil my body fast enough from its squat. The wasps have cleared my face but I imagine their collective u-turn, a trio of terror: The Blue Ovipositor Angels. I scramble toward the door with dread, the back of my neck exposed, vulnerable. I’m in. Door shut. I swipe my neck, tug my shirt, keep walking. I lean on a love seat in the sitting room and feel a twinge in my glute. Cheryl walks up the stairs, radiant, a bounce in her hair, “Ready for dinner, baby?”
The next morning, the sun and Cheryl yet to rise, I find the paper wasp honeycomb on the deck lying like a forgotten umbrella after a rain. A few wasps in the dawn air. I hold the nest in my hand, intact, no damage from the bludgeoning, as if I’d shaved it off surgically. I count maybe 50 hexagonal cavities but they’re empty, the queen had yet to lay any eggs. The nest is light as tissue. Under the chair is a discolored, textured spot where the nest attached. Wasps have a gut enzyme that digests wood turning it to paste to anchor their nest.
Next to the glass jar of dead carpenter bees, a wasp lands. I pick up the spray can from where I’d dropped it the night before. I am not above dosing this wasp. I notice a mud wasp nest near the ceiling for the first time. Will this ever end? Finger on the nozzle, I extend my arm and in my mind the wasp drops like a stone; I picture a toxic cloud, coalescing, descending, coating the lawn in a pyrethroid dew. The wasp lifts and hovers. I have a clean shot. I keep the spray can trained as the wasp vanishes beyond the deck.
A world without wasps would be catastrophic for the world and the global economy.
Later, the sun is shining and Cheryl is reading in the sitting room. I fix her a cup of coffee just the way she likes it, sweet. She puts her book down as I proudly present the wasp nest cupped in my hand. “Gross,” she says.
“It’s really light. Would you like to hold it?”
“Eew. Get rid of it outside. Maybe the turtle will eat it.”
I take the nest to my in-laws’ front porch. A depression dug in the mulch behind a muffin shrub is still there from when we’d first seen the turtle digging, fins ungainly flapping the Friday we’d arrived. All weekend we’d checked, but the turtle never returns. I flick the nest beyond the shrub where it lands in the lawn, honeycomb exposed to the sun, next to a small white sign with green lettering. The sign reads: PESTICIDE APPLICATION. STAY OFF UNTIL DRY.
It’s the exact same sign sunk in the soil of our own front lawn.