Empty nest.

I shared my balcony with wasps for three years, peacefully. It never occurred to me to get rid of them because they never bothered me. I liked watching them come and go on their errands while I read or wrote. We were co-working.

Then one night last week, I was getting up to go inside, and put my foot down right on a cluster that had fallen, and got stung to kingdom come. The wasps went crazy. Two of them flew into my apartment. While my friend took care of those (with a copy of The Ethical Slut, no less), I put ice on them, washed them, daubed a traditional Belizean ointment on them, took two Advil and an antihistamine, and by the time I went to bed you couldn’t even tell where the stings were.

I felt like some unspoken treaty had been violated. I got a can of Raid. When I used it for the first time, the jet startled me so much I almost dropped the can. Wasps flew in every direction like fireworks. I hurried back inside and closed the door. But I could see them writhing on the ground.

Now everything is quiet.

I was out there, just now, and saw a single wasp fly in, as if to check whether anyone was home. No, nobody home, the nests are empty. She flew away again.

I feel bad.

This is the closest shot I could get of the main cluster. Somehow it resists the focusing action of my smartphone camera, like a scattering glamour.

~

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