The Revenge of the Wasp

Recently, one day I noticed a yellow wasp, in the sitting room, that was making a beeline to the window opening towards the Park. Realising that the strayed insect wanted to go out I opened it to let it fly to the outside world. A day later the flight of the single wasp, of the other day, had had turned into a continuous flight like that the Berlin Air Bridge of the Cold War era.

The wasps showing the same single minded attitude to fly towards the window; single minded to the extent of totally ignoring my presence, possibly they realised that I was helping them to continue with their mission by repeatedly opening the window. However, I with the memory of an extremely painful sting from the past was not fooled by the Transport Aircraft like docile attitude of the insects. Uncomfortable and uneasy with the rapidly increasing, by the day, numbers in the flight, I commenced an extensive search of the house; the rooms, the kitchen, under and behind the furniture, albeit with little success in locating the home airfield, their own Air Port. In desperation I tried to be a bit adventurist and climbed on the unstable cushions of the sofa, still wobbling and trying to maintain balance, I pulled aside the curtain frill covering the pelmet. Lo and behold, what do I see, the home base, a medium size nest was cunningly hidden under the exit pipe of the Split AC. To my horror, the nest was swarming with wasps all over the combs of the nest.

The mystery of the unending flight to the world outside was now solved; it were the worker wasps out to collect food for the larva and material for extending the nest, leaving the queen in the nest to focus on reproduction. More than a bit shaken with the sight, a bit apprehensive and also not too sure of the reaction from the multitude crawling on the nest, I quickly picked up the Baygon Spray can for ‘flying insects’ and directed a long shot at the nest downing the Wasps on the nest, albeit not without a bit of remorse: after all they were doing what we all do, and that too peacefully; building a house and looking after the infants.

Following a quick Google search, and the memory of my earlier Sting, there was a warning on the net ‘no jerky movements’ ‘no bright colour clothes, I took preventive action, fearing the possibility of a mass attack from the workers to save their queen and the nest and the transport aircraft turning into Kamikaze fighters, with these precautions in hand and with the help of the maid the nest with the larva, the queen and any remaining wasps was soon disposed off.

Now at peace, I suddenly noticed a solitary Wasp buzzing near the window, though still chary and with the spray-can, as a precaution, in my hand I cautiously approached the window to let the wasp go free. However, it had a different plan. As I neared the window the wasp turned into the feared Kamikaze and dived with the my nose as its target letting go all the venom stored in his body and dropping dead in the process.

The suddenness of the attack and the excruciating pain from the sting resulted in my bifocals flying off and the can falling from my hand on the floor with a clatter. Possibly my red Tee Shirt combined with the jerky and cautious movements of my approach , more possibly the memory of mine with the Can in my hand identified me as a hostile target resulting in the attack on me , the perpetrator of the destruction of his nest and death of the siblings. In his death the wasp had had his revenge, though a victim, I cannot fail but admire it’s single mindedness.

Brig Lakshman Singh, VSM (Retd)

Kamikaze literally meaning "God-wind", "spirit-wind" or "divinity-wind"; common translation: "divine wind". Kamikaze is a word of Japanese origin, which in English usually refers to the suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan, against Allied shipping, in the closing stages of the Pacific Campaigns of World War II, to destroy as many warships as possible.

On June 26, 1948, when the Berlin Airlift began, chances of success seemed slim and its significance was unclear. But it is now regarded as the first battle of the Cold War — one that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union's European ambitions and to this day shapes the German view of the U.S. and Britain. The operation began after the Soviets blockaded West Berlin — an enclave inside Soviet-occupied eastern Germany — in an attempt to squeeze out the U.S., Britain and France. American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African pilots flew some 278,000 flights to Berlin over a 15-month period, carrying about 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies. Every 62 seconds a plane touched down, bringing coal, food, clothes, even materiel to build a new power plant in Berlin. The Air Bridge ended on September 30th, 1949, after Stalin accepted the fact that his plan had failed miserably.