Little things we’re afraid of

Bald-faced hornet in the kitchen window

Mid-afternoon, the dog lying outside in the dry, golden grass and prickly foxtails, a winged insect beat against the glass of the closed kitchen door. A bee. One of the largest I’ve ever seen, apart from a queen bumblebee once crawling in the backyard.

Being in Washington, I wondered if the insect was a northern giant hornet. It was large and difficult to see clearly. Looking back, I suspect all that motion made it seem much bigger than it was. Or maybe it was a fear of bees playing tricks with my mind.

Normally, I’d open the door and escort the bee outside, but I hesitated. A potentially invasive species was not a normal situation, and hornets rarely warrant rescue from most people; we’ve all heard stories of aggressive swarms, venom, and painful bites. Add “invader” to the description, a “destroyer of ecosystems,” a “killer of honeybees,” and the alarm ratchets up.

I did not let the bee out. Instead, I closed the second door that allowed the insect in, trapping it in the house while I searched the internet to verify my suspicion.

Invasive species can cause significant ecological damage, and the northern giant hornet has enough venom to kill a person, especially if that person is prone to allergic reaction. Yet, when it comes to individual animals who were thrust into an environment they have not coevolved with, through no fault of their own (or because their native habitats are less habitable than they once were), I am not inclined to want to kill them.  

With a little bit of research, I discovered what many who know a little about bees already know. It wasn’t an invasive giant hornet. As big as it seemed, it was not that big, and I was grateful to be spared the ethical dilemma of dealing with an invasive species. This bee was most likely a more common North American wasp, though I still didn’t know which wasp at the time.

While I hovered over the laptop and scrolled past government, university, and pest control webpages, the bee moved away from the doors and slammed itself against a window with white sheers. I followed by going outside to take the picture.

Studying the face, I saw nothing friendly there. I saw mandibles that could tear smaller insects to pieces. I did not like this insect buzzing around my kitchen, and now it would be more difficult to get it back outside. The door, now open, was several feet from the window, and bee was tired. It stopped moving.

It felt silly to be afraid of such a small thing, so I went back to the internet. I saw reports of people who encountered the harmless Elm sawfly, another kind of large wasp, which they confused with the northern giant hornet. Perhaps that’s what I was dealing with. I didn’t have a lot of faith, but I was trying to summon my courage to help usher this individual back to the outdoors where it belonged.

Fears of spiders, wasps, and other small animals with more than four legs are common. Maybe our phobias are from some primal reflex to avoid venom and toxins. These fears then get amplified by pop culture, horror movies, and local lore — after all, stories about insects are usually worth telling only when something bad happens — otherwise, they don’t make very interesting stories.

Compound scare tactics with a general lack of knowledge about the animals who live their whole lives in our backyards, the ensuing anxiety can lead to all sort of irrational behaviors that can make comedy gold.

So there I stood, facing some kind of wasp, trying to convince myself it couldn’t sting me, though I had little confidence. I pulled the hood of my hoodie up over my head and tied the strings tightly  in case it felt like making a bee line for my neck and down my shirt. I pulled my sleeves down far over my hands. I looked for something to help me direct the insect from a distance.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been stung by wasps before. I had a welt on my leg that lasted the entire summer after my junior year of high school. I’ve had spider bites, once from a large, yellow spider that bit my finger, unnoticed until I felt the burn and saw it chomping away.

None of these experiences were pleasant, and I’d like to avoid similar events in the future, but I survived each, and they weren’t particularly awful. I don’t want to belittle the potential severity of bee stings, but I don’t seem to be especially allergic. They sting, burn, leave red marks, and are uncomfortable for a while. That’s all. Besides, I’m so much bigger than they are.

Now that I live in western Washington with its late summer spider season, I’ve grown accustomed to trapping and removing large, brown house spiders, especially when they get themselves stuck in a sink or bathtub. Sometimes I watch them scurry across the floor and if they go to some crevice at a baseboard, I ignore them. I mostly got over my spider phobia, so I’d like to get over my bee angst as well. I was determined to safely help this wasp.

Those who know something about bees probably know I was gazing into the eyes of a bald-faced hornet, which is actually a type of aerial yellowjacket and not a hornet at all. They’re common in North America and not exactly the most peaceful bees out there.

I didn’t know this until I verified much later with the iNaturalist app. I avoided researching any noninvasive wasp; I needed the hope of the harmless Elm sawfly possibility to keep me going. I also didn’t want the whole event to take much longer. The bee had been flying at one window or another for about ten minutes already.

I found a flattened cardboard box, about three feet long, long enough to have to maintain a distance that felt safe, even though I logically know wasps fly fast and three feet is nothing. The cardboard was also sturdy enough that it wouldn’t flop and bend. My plan was to use the box to push the bee toward the open door and then use it as a shield to prevent the insect from flying back and going further into the house.

I gave the wasp a nudge.

It barely moved.

I nudged against, this time with a little more pressure.

Instead of flying away, it crawled onto the cardboard. And there I had it, not trapped, not frantic, but exhausted and letting me move it. We went outside and I set the flattened box that carried the bald-faced hornet on the railing. The wasp was still for about two minutes, and then it flew off across the yard.

So there it is: an insect story where nothing happens. Not only an insect story, but a wasp story. A yellowjacket story. In essence, it’s a boring story, except it didn’t feel boring when it happened.

How terrifying one small creature can be, even when that terror makes little sense. We were not near a hive. Only one insect was present. I am not overly allergic to bee or wasp stings. And yet, I was scared.

The irony doesn’t escape me: the common fear of bees bolsters an entire pest management industry that’s full of chemicals. The fear of natural toxins is eradicated with other toxins. And the equivalent fear of a world without insect pollinators appears to be substantially less common. Insect pollinators are dwindling, though to be fair, the bald-faced hornet does not seem to be in the same danger as honeybees, bumblebees, certain butterflies and moths, or lightning bugs, but it provides an ecological function nonetheless.

That is what I worry about, though I don’t often say it. Most times, the fear of being dismissed as an alarmist or a “damn tree hugger” is just as strong. So I usually stay quiet. I rationalize — you can’t convince people of the things they don’t want to believe, but there’s a second part as well. An insecurity. What if they’re right? What if I am alarmist and we’re not facing an environmental catastrophe that should scare us all? Well, if that’s the truth, so be it. We should all be the lucky ones if the biologists and ecologists and conservationists and climate scholars are wrong.

Then there’s the third part: what if the scientists are right and the world is plummeting further into a mass extinction event and those in power and those who yell the loudest and those who are the deniers and the disinterested, those who blame it on someone else, and those who are too scared to stand up and stand out, what if so many of us do nothing? Say nothing? What if we just let things die?