The menace emerges anew, this time in the form of paper-chewing wasps. The one pictured at right is busily assembling a Death Hive directly above our back door.

Unacceptable. Although it’s a sign that spring has indeed sprung, the prospect of a backyard filled with stinging insects is something I hadn’t considered when I moved out of the city to the tree-blossom-filled neigborhoods of Menlo Park. Returning from the laundry room, I startled what I first thought was a bald-faced hornet the size of a small aircraft carrier sunning on the sidewalk. It was actually a huge, fuzzy bumblebee, which lazily took flight on comically small wings, and flew about five yards before smacking into the side of the porch.

(Whereupon it continued to smack! smack! smack! itself into the same wall, getting lower and lower with each attempt to breach the confounded obstacle, until it finally landed in the hedge below.)

This fact did not prevent me from shrieking like a five-year-old and dropping my laundry basket.

Okay. Bees I can handle. They’re funny, and some of them make honey, which is good in tea. Wasps, on the other hand, produce no honey, only malice. And if they did produce honey, it would be evil honey.

Previously: This Is What It’s Come To

Next: Song: “The Big Lie That Solves Everything”