The Hornet was a Total ASSHOLE!

When I was 15 years old my parents were building a house on the 120 acres they had bought in the mountains of north Georgia. One day I was sitting at the picnic table my dad had built (everyone else was gone...to town to pick up building supplies I think)...and I was just chilling out, meditating. All of the sudden this GIGANTIC fucking hornet landed on my right forearm. Just came out of nowhere and landed on my arm. This bitch was HUGE! Emotionally, she looked about as big as my fist.

Okay, I thought. She's sitting there. I'm sitting here. If I just old still she won't sting me. There's no reason for her to sting me. I'll just hold still and wait for her to fly away.

And that is the precise moment she stung the FUCKING SHIT out of me!!!

Now, let me say right off that most stings don't bother me. All of my life I have spent a lot of time outdoors because that's where I like to be. Subsequently, I have been stung by everything you can think of: honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, yellowjackets, dirt daubers, red wasps, scorpions, you name it. And because I have been stung so many times by so many critters I have built up something akin to a dull acceptance of being stung. I don't stress out when it happens and I deal with the pain easily--so easily that stings generally only hurt me for a few seconds before the pain fades.

But this hornet...oh. my. fucking. god.

IT HURT!!! Great Humping Jove, it hurt! When she stung me she immediately took flight so that I couldn't have killed her no matter how much I'd have wanted to. But that wasn't foremost on my mind. What I was worrying about was the pain!!! I cannot describe it. As I said, most stings don't bother me that much--red wasps really hurt, but even that was nothing like this.

Pain shot through my entire arm. From my forearm where she stung me all the way to my shoulder and down into my fingers. I mean, she really laid that stinger deep into my flesh. The entry point was livid with an almost blood-red target right at the center where the stinger had plunged through the skin. I ran onto the screened-in porch and found a jug of cool water and poured it over my arm, which began to swell until it looked like a ping-pong ball had been lodged under my flesh.

I didn't know what kind of hornet that was, but I have been happy in the intervening 45 years that I have never encountered another one.

This is likely the species of hornet that stung me. There is only one native species that lives in Georgia: the Bald faced hornet. From my 45-year-old memory, this looks about right. From what I've read, they're usually rather docile when compared to things like yellowjackets, but the one that got me was anything but docile.

(For a story about the time I did get a nasty scorpion sting you can go HERE.)

Preparations with Detours to Yellowjackets and Velvet Ants

Carole and I went to our travel trailer to get it ready for our upcoming holiday trip to the mountains of southwestern Virginia. We scrubbed up the Casita, stocked it with groceries, fired up the refrigerator so that it'll already be cold when we head out in a few days. We made sure all of our spare clothes were in the closet in case we run into any cool or rainy weather (jackets, vests, hoodies, raincoats, etc).

While I was dragging out things like power cords and water hoses and brushes and soap, I noticed the local critters. I always have an eye open for the wild things. Didn't see much in the way of birds or little mammals, but I did see some of the little creatures of Mother Nature.

First thing I saw as I was setting up the hoses to wash the trailer was a Velvet ant marching across the parking lot. They're hard to miss. They are a vibrant red that shows up against just about any surface. Now, many small animals want to remain camouflaged and as anonymous as possible. Not the Velvet ant. Its bright colors serve the same purpose as a rattlesnake's rattles: STAY AWAY! I WILL HURT YOU!

The Velvet ant when I first noticed her.

Leave me alone, human!

I'm out of here! Don't follow!

 
Velvet ants may look like ants and superficially they may act like ants...but they are not ants. They are, in fact, wingless wasps. And they have a potent sting. You do NOT want to be stung by one of these large ladies. I've never been zapped by one, but I have spoken to folk who have, and they measure the wallop right up there with the worst of the big hornets. They're also VERY fast. Extremely fast. They seem to constantly be in a hurry and you don't really want to put one in a position of having to sting you.

I took my photos from a distance.

Next, Carole's mother told me to be careful for the yellowjacket nest near the swing where she goes to relax. She couldn't use it because the last time she sat there she noticed a yellowjacket nest at her feet with an active stream of the little wasps flying in and out of the tunnel opening. So, of course, I went to investigate.

The entrance to the hive. Hard to see.

Sure enough, there is a large colony of yellowjackets there. They were quite active while I was watching and I made sure not to get in the way of the entrance to the hive while I took photographs with the telephoto lens on my camera.

In a few days she's going to have them killed. I tried to talk her out of it, explaining that they'll be gone in a few weeks on their own and there's no real need to destroy them. But she's determined to have them killed. She has lost the use of her swing, so she does have a point. Me...I'd let them run their course and go dormant. But I'm just strange that way.

The hive was very busy. One thing about it was that either arriving or leaving, the jellowjackets did both extremely quickly. They did not tarry at the entrance.

This one was the lookout. She never left that spot the whole time I was there.

Reminds me of the Zanti Misfits.

A Kind of Snow

Some weeks ago my wife and I went camping near the Pisgah National Forest. We were in a campground that was gated and locked by 10:00 pm, and so we were denied one of our usual pleasures of camping. Namely, driving some of the Forest Service roads late into the night, looking for spots to stargaze and watching for wildlife as we cruise slowly along the dirt and gravel ways.

One afternoon we did take a drive toward a Forest Service road near a huge pluton called John Rock where a fish hatchery is located, along with a very nice visitors center. By the time we got there, it was dark. The sun had long since faded and set and we were unfortunately clock-watching so that we wouldn't linger too long and get locked out of our campsite.

The entrance to the Fish Hatchery and John Rock.

I wanted to show Carole the terminus of a trail I'd once hiked to the summit of John Rock, and so we turned into the parking lot of the fish hatchery and I took the truck through the large and empty parking lot to where the trailhead was located. I showed her the signage and told her of nice backpacking campsites located along the way, beside the trail and in the forests beside small streams and bubbling springs, and of the fantastic views from the treeless summit of John Rock. And then we turned in the huge parking lot and started back to the bridge that would take us back to the Forest Service road and then to NC 64 and our return drive to the campground.

That was when we noticed the air.

The twin beams of the truck's headlights cut through the moonless dark. All around us were billions of insects. Above us. Beside us. Beneath us. The air was packed with flying, flitting, hovering bugs. They were, quite literally, everywhere. There in that low spot where the river cut down into the earth, these insects were dancing, living, speaking to one and all.

"It's snowing life," I said to Carole.