Yellowjacket Peril

If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.

I imagine we all received that simple advice. Skeptically though I received it, accept it I did when my dad insisted repeatedly that I had little if anything to fear from the wasps in my childhood yard in Texas. The lesson learned was that minding one’s own business produces safety.

To be sure, if you go stirring up a wasp’s nest, you’re likely to get stung. I recently witnessed this when a friend of my seven-year-old son held a birthday party outside on a beautiful fall day. Adults and children played in a field while cake was prepared, food set out, etc. They played chase, cricket, tag – 2nd grader games.

One of those games, apparently, had been named “repeatedly jam a tree branch into that hole in the ground, just because that’s fun.” I didn’t hear any of the kids call it that, but I came to understand it shortly after the first kid started screaming bloody murder from across the lawn. The child had evidently been stung by a bee, and was rolling around in pain on the ground, crying out for mercy and assistance. What adult can resist a child’s helpless call for help? None, from what I saw: a horde of adults rushed to provide aid, and I was no exception. As I raced to the scene of the sting though, I heard another cry – this one from one of MY sons. I changed course and soon found him – tears in his eyes, swatting desperately at his arm, screaming in distress and pain. I helped him brush multiple yellowjackets off of his arm, and ran with him away from the area. But they kept on him, and he was stung a total of six times in the course of the next 60 seconds or less.

Meanwhile, several other kids had gotten in on the screaming, and the volume and panic had reached zoo levels. My youngest son, it soon became clear, had been victim to the attack as well. The yellowjackets were everywhere, and they were madder than… well, they were madder than hornets.

All in all, 5 children were stung – multiple times each. I handed out Benadryl to anyone in need, and kids were shuffled into cars for safekeeping from the flying marauders. When we, the adults, investigated what had happened, we found that the kids – far from being victims – had been antagonizing the yellowjackets with the aforementioned game. Apparently, the motion of churning butter, when applied by tree branch to an underground nest of thousands of yellowjackets, causes consternation in the hive and leads to retribution. Who knew? …my dad did – and he taught me well.

Now, my sons know too, and the welts they earned acquiring that wisdom have all but faded. The bigger lesson though – don’t mess with others and others won’t mess with you – may have been lost. As I deal with a provocateur in my adult life right now, I am reminded by my reactions that each of us takes a turn as the wasp sometimes, just as each of us takes turns as the antagonist – and frequently cries victim when we feel retribution’s sting.

What does it take to truly teach the lesson: live and let live?