The local NBC outlet ran a story a couple of weeks ago about how aggressive wasps are in this area at this time of year, and all I can say is that I agree.
I'm guessing that, whether this picture correctly depicts them or not, my particular tormentors are ground nesters, and that they've found a home in the narrow space between my house and the house directly west of me -- there are bushes and a fence and ground cover -- and yesterday there was, when I looked, a virtual cloud of a half dozen or more of the creatures, patrolling the space between the bushes and the garbage bins.
We don't have to go through there often. I can't get the lawnmower into the backyard without running through the insect gauntlet. And the garbage bins have to be accessed, and the appropriate bins moved to the curb, once a week, on Mondays, for Garbage Day. But our yard is also accessible from sliding glass doors in our den, and the door hasn't tried to kill me since July, so that's pretty good. That's also another story entirely.
For years I have carefully avoided getting stung. That's the best gloss I can put on my cowardice, manifested on many occasions over the years, bravely running away, like Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from any sort of buzzing insect or rumor thereof. I was concerned that I might be seriously allergic -- as many of my relatives apparently were -- and, as you know, there is really only one certain way to find out for certain if that might be the case.
I did finally get stung or bit last fall. I brought the flag in around dusk on Labor Day and was preparing to put it away when I got bit by a bee or wasp that had been chilling on the flag. Taking the flag in from the front of the house, across the lawn, into the house -- none of this was enough to rouse the insect to action... or flight... but when my hand got near it, it must have seemed the wasp or bee equivalent of a cheeseburger or something because the insect decided to take a healthy bite. We got the bug out of the house; I kept my hand. I was apparently not super allergic after all.
Which was fortunate indeed because, a couple of weeks ago, as I was getting the garbage bins, I got bit. I didn't cry like a baby, but I did expostulate about my bad fortune, apparently at a loud volume, because my wife intercepted me before I could cross the living room, demanding to see where the wound had been inflicted. I remember sitting on the couch with her examining my hand. I complained that my foot hurt, too, like something was biting my foot. I loosened my shoe just enough to see a bee or wasp or whatever trying to munch through my sock. Maybe it was the same one that bit my hand, maybe it was a different one. That one, at least, will bite no one ever again.
This brings us to this past Monday. I had gotten the garbage out the week before without incident; perhaps this week I let my guard down a tad. All I know for certain is that I grabbed the garbage bin to wheel it up front and an insect grabbed my right ring finger and took a good chomp. I may have responded with a shout, using a word that the three young boys in that house to my west really shouldn't hear. Hopefully, on Monday, they didn't.
Anyway, despite the prompt and repeated topical application of a Benadryl cream, the finger is swollen and clenching a fist is somewhat difficult. At least I didn't get one in my shoe this time.
It was Tuesday, yesterday, when I had to cut to cut the grass in the back, and therefore bring the lawnmower past the bins and through the gate, that I observed a cloud of the little buggers -- but I got in and out of the backyard, with the lawnmower, and without further injury. Brave, brave, brave Sir Robin indeed.
When I was a younger man, it was widely asserted that Killer Bees were going to swarm out of Mexico, into America's heartlands, and sting us all to death. If you think that sounds a little like the current AI hysteria, well, I do, too.
There are -- Google assures me this morning -- still killer bees about. Their range may still be advancing, although, obviously at a much slower rate than that forecast three decades ago. Oh, and the aggressive qualities that distinguished the africanized honeybees are seemingly modifynig as the incoming species mixes and mingles with similar bees already in situ. So nothing to sneeze at, not exactly a hoax, but certainly nothing like the doomsday scenarios that were once shouted by the media.
Meanwhile, in the real world, it's the things that are already here -- like wasps -- that get uber-aggressive around this time every year, as their colonies reach maximum size, and as they somehow perceive that Winter is Coming -- that provide the real threat. And the actual injuries.
So it may also prove to be with AI. While everyone is waiting for Artificial Intelligence to enslave us all, and destroy all human economies, and sap human initiative, it may be the surveillance cameras already in place that actually harm us. Maybe it will be something else. There is enough scary stuff right here, right now, to merit our vigilance, without getting carried away with the latest doomsday narrative about AI.
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