The Rascal Who Loved Me
Wasp Life. Citizen Science Life.
Recently at the garden of my writing workshop in NY, I was fixated on a cute poppy flower, one of the most recognizable plants anywhere.
Leaning in from my chair, I studied the petals, ready to fall in love with the pale pink, baby-girl shades. Somewhere, I’d read that a whole entire field of poppies is called a flush.
I sat back again looking into the middle distance, trying to imagine a flush of nodding poppy blooms bobbing in the breeze. I focused hard to see my poppy dreams, but my attention kept being called away.
Over here look at me, yeah I’m quick. I sting. I wing. I may give you a startle.
Lookie here. Yea girl. I’m talkin’ to you.
It was a wasp.
My daddy called them “waspers,” which I like. Makes ‘em sound like go-getters, impulsive, edgy.
“Hey, you wasper,” I said, lowering my voice, already thinking of her as a rascal, letting those pretty-baby-poppies fade into a dull background blur.
I’ve been a rascal in my days.
Everybody knows rascals are gay, lively, and sharp. The best kind of rascals may be the life of the party, but they get the job done. My dad, a Tennessee farmer, was like that too, and the man dealt with more than his share of bugs, both stinging and non.
Instantly, I’m tender toward his memory on this sweltering day, weather well-known to anyone who works outside all summer long. I wonder why Daddy had a rascally pet name for the wasp.
“Whatcha think of these of these poppies, Ms. Wasper?”
She seemed to be okay with them.
The winged one also seemed to be okay with me too, as she jittered close in my space then all over those pink poppies like she was some kind of Boss Lady. Like she was a Boss Hoss airplane pilot who demanded only short-hop flights so she could sleep in her own nest at night.
Wasps can be rascals, yeah, they’ll ruin your picnic but also: they get the job done.
Bees seem to get all the good pollination press. But their touchy relatives, these wasp individuals from the meaner side of the family, deserve credit too. Wasps provide natural pest control and are pollinators for almost 1,000 different plant species. Some 164 of those plants are fully dependent on the wasp for life.
The morning’s getting hotter, and I’m ready to flee the garden. Ms. Wasper is still at it, tipping and dipping through twirly sweet pea vines. I can’t really see that she has a plan, but her moves today have really sent me tripping into the past.
I fell for her and her git-r-done ways even though when I leaned in to snap a picture for iNaturalist, she gave a rude rush toward my face. A warning? I came too close? Chastised, I put away the technology, folded up my chair, and headed to the house to finish my citizen science duties.
I’ll remember the wasp well. In fact, with great respect and a little fear, today I added “wasper” to the Best Bug Aliases (BBA) Wikipedia page.
No, but seriously. I did add her picture to iNaturalist where I learned she was a paper wasp. Worldwide, iNaturalist citizen scientists are, of course, documenting wasps. There are almost 380,000 images of paper wasps alone.
Most of the 20,000 wasp species are the solitary kind. Solitary wasps do not sting and most humans are more familiar with social wasps, which do. The bad news? A wasp sting can be intense, and the pain can last for days. The other and better news? The NIH reported in 2021 that wasp venom could be a promising medication ingredient. 1
Do consider: citizen science for wasps. Don’t consider: your can of Raid.
“They’re the maligned insect of the insect world – they’re viewed as the gangsters. Whereas actually we should be viewing them as a beneficial insect – they’re doing us a favor, and we’re just completely overlooking that favor.” —Dr. Seirian Sumner, University College London
This year marks the 8th year of the Big Wasp Survey in the UK. The project is designed to understand the effects habitat destruction and pesticides are having on paper wasp species.
Several years of data have now accumulated and research papers are being published, like this one from August 2023: Using citizen science data to assess the population genetic structure of the common yellowjacket wasp, Vespula vulgaris. The authors note that their work would have cost much more, or perhaps wouldn’t have happened at all, if the nearly 400 wasps collected from across the UK had not come from volunteers.
Props to the citizen scientists!
If you see one of these social wasps, please don’t reach for the Raid.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment for Animal) writes: “Because of the beneficial predatory role that wasps play in suppressing a wide variety of insects, your objective should be to reduce encounters with these animals, not to eliminate them from the area entirely. Wasps eat ticks and feed their young other insects such as houseflies and blowflies.” (More PETA advice for being around social wasps.)
Still not happy with wasps? Draw one to bring out the love (or the like?)
Effective digital projects deliver creative ways for learning, often using charts and multimedia. For example, at the Big Wasp Survey website, I found this tutorial on how to draw a wasp. Research proves that drawing helps people remember things. Personally, drawing something helps me like it more too, a truth I’ve discovered this year as I’ve been sketching birds, bugs and butterflies in my field journals.
Coming up: This summer, Fred and I are enrolled in Master Naturalist classes at Smithgall Woods State Park, and it is going fantastic. We are in class for nine Mondays in a row and are almost halfway through our summer session. So far, our topics have been fishing, native flowering plants, forestry, beekeeping, mycology, reptiles, butterflies, and game management.
All subjects have been engaging, and are a mix of classroom presentations and nearby field trips. I’m working on a story about our fishing day when we waded upstream in the creek to do some “electrofishing.” Yes, shocking, I know.
Also, do you create field journals? I learned more about them recently in a workshop and am now creating a single community science page after each of my Master Naturalist classes. I’ll do a newsletter on them soon.
Pamela, my Grandfather, from Clarkesville TN, also called them Waspers.
I have a new friendship with them after learning how important their pollination is for us! I used to zap them with Raid as well! Ced
I love your journal, Pam! Have fun with the Master Naturalists 😊