Busy as can be
With the return of colder weather (yes, it’s August, and I no longer want to go and sleep outside), the world around me is preparing for the season when grass stops growing. While waiting for the bus this afternoon, I was drawn to a busy area in the base of the fence behind me, where the coming and going was the biggest show on the corner. Striped insects, doing the in and out so quickly I couldn’t keep count.
My limited knowledge of the stinging world told me I was watching wasps. There are about 1300 species of wasps and bees here in Canada (according to the government, which is able to keep track of such thing much better than the rest of us). I am not familiar enough to identify the exact model number on these flying venom dispensers, so let’s generalize to wasp, living in a hole.
The interesting thing is that they had absolutely no interest in me, even though I could have kicked one or a dozen at any time. I was a captive audience, given the late arrival of my bus, but we were living in parallel worlds. Me, standing around; them, working hard at building up the stores for winter (this is an assumption). I didn’t get stung; I didn’t get strafed. Nothing.
Maybe I could have had a close encounter of another kind if I had kicked, or tried to eyeball them one on one, but this was a quiet moment on a busy street in a big city. Me and the insects. Not much else to say, is there?
