Stories From Under The Sky

Beware the Paper Cities!

beware the paper cities! MyMORBID ATTRACTION to bugs that bite and sting may stem from that day on Squaw Creek nearly thirty years ago when I was sitting on the bank watching Moon Hansen execute "suckup" dives into a deep eddy. About all I was wearing was freckles, and I had my bare legs draped over the brink of the creek bank. Somewhere in that creek bank was a nest of yellow-jacket wasps. It was early summer when such wasps have a notoriously low boiling point, especially when a small, naked boy is drumming against their doorway with his heels. The deep water was only about seven feet below me, but that flight through the air seemed a lot longer than it really was. A dozen of the wasps took me on the wing, and I hit the water in full whoop in what was easily the most spectacular dive of the day. After a while the older boys poulticed me with cool mud, the stings swelled up grandly, and I was very brave. To this day - when someone mentions wasps - I feel the quiet heroism that comes from suffering I5 I well-borne, and a lingering regret that wasp stings don't leave scars. I deserved at least that much. There was another day, years later, when I thought I'd achieved those scars. It was early in the squirrel season. I was crawling under a barbed wire fence when a lone yellowjacket slipped under my shirt collar. He was where I couldn't reach him, and before I got to my feet I thought he'd cut me in half. Yellow-jackets are potent from either end. Their powerful jaws are capable of chewing fence posts and can cruelly abuse the tender pelt between a man's shoulders. Alternately biting and stinging, that wasp stitched me fiercely before I came up yelling from under the fence and got to a tree to rub my back against. That night the mirror showed a trail of red welts extending ten inches across my back. I didn't feel heroic about this episode - only indignant. Somehow, being stabbed in the back while bellying under a fence smacks of dirty pool. Bees have painful stings, but they're one-shot warriors. Their stingers are barbed and cannot be withdrawn once they're inserted. When a stinging bee is brushed away, its stinger tears out of the abdomen and ruptures delicate organs, invariably killing the insect. But wasps and hornets carry unbarbed spears and they can strike repeatedly and with impunity. Only the females have stingers - small, polished lancets of chitin that were originally intended for egg-laying. In other insects these ovipositers are inserted into the ground or into plant stems and act as guides for the emerging eggs. In the wasps, hornets and bees this delicate spine has evolved to a highly specialized weapon connected with two large poison sacs and is no longer used for egg-laying. This venom contains a potent charge of formic acid. The severity of the sting depends largely on the quantity and I52 concentration of the acid and other agents. Stingers are used for defense by bees, but they are offensive weapons with the predacious wasps and hornets who feed on insects that are paralyzed or killed by the stings. Even more ferocious than the yellow-jacket is that black and white thunderbolt, the bald-faced hornet. It may be over an inch long, totally black except for white markings on the abdomen and a white patch on the face and head. Beware! Several bald hornets, surprised at work on their unfinished nest, threaten the photographer. No other stinging insect in North America can match it. I would rather surprise a basking rattlesnake than a nest of bald hornets in early summer. This is the creature that builds the great paper nestssometimes as large as bushel baskets - found in the trees and bushes of the back country. With their hard, strong jaws, the hornets scrape fine wood shavings from weathered posts and dead trees, moistening the shavings with saliva. This tiny wad of wet wood pulp is carried back to the nest site and extruded in a thin ribbon on the outside of the growing nest where it hardens and dries to become gray paper. Yellow-jackets build similar nests underground, usually near water. Bald hornets suspend their nests in the open...