Why a Hornet?

All 4.5 of my faithful readers may remember my story about sharing an elevator ride with a hornet. This morning I had another hornet experience: there is a window on either side of the front door of the building my condo is in, and on the lefthand window was the biggest, blackest hornet I had ever seen, desperately buzzing around as it tried to find a way out. It was three times the size of a yellow jacket, but I figured it was not nearly as aggressive, and it was such a beautiful, shiny ebony that I couldn't help admiring it and feeling for its plight. I held my auto insurance bill out to it and it climbed onto it, then it crawled onto me. I was a little leery (you should have seen the size of its stinger!) but it did not sting me, and when I walked outside, it suddenly turned into an angel and said that since I had passed the test and was compassionate to one of God's creatures, I could have anything I wanted, so I asked for a greenhouse. Just kidding, it flew off happily, but I'm sure I got lots of karma points for helping it!

Here is yet another hornet story for your reading pleasure: once Richard Bonomo, Tiffy, and I went to a picnic at an observatory, and Tiffy and I saw the biggest, most beautiful ant ever. It was a rich crimson color and seemed to be made of satin or velvet with a fierce-looking black stinger, and it ran very quickly over the ground. I wanted to follow it, thinking there must be an entire colony of these beautiful ants, but Tiffy thought it looked scary and we should keep our distance. Later I googled "satin ant" and found nothing, but when I googled "velvet ant," there it was - the Velvet Ant! She was actually a wingless hornet, and she spends her days searching for yellow jacket nests in which to lay her eggs, so that her young can devour their young. Not only beautiful but useful too! However, velvet ants have an excessively painful sting (which, unlike yellow jackets, they only use when provoked) which is so awful that one of their common names is "cow killer," so Tiffy's instinct to keep our distance was right on.

A guy I once dated said his favorite quote is from Dylan Thomas, who as a child received a coloring book that he said "told everything about the wasp but why." Then again, why anything? Why mosquitoes? Why (yuck!) tomatoes? Why hurricanes? Why a duck? I for one, not being God, do not know the answer.

Famous Hat