Wednesday September 26, 2007
Heirs to the kingdom
I don\’t know why a wasp would be riding in my jacket pocket. But she was.
I say “she” because only female wasps carry stingers. In that sense, wasps differ from humans; male wasps are harmless.
So are all honeybees, generally, unless they\’re defending their nest. When a honeybee stings, the stinger rips out of its abdomen. The bee soon dies – not an evolutionary advantage. Wasps, on the other hand, can withdraw their stinger and sting again. That favors a more aggressive attitude.
The wasp in my pocket nailed me in my wrist.
When I jerked my hand out, I saw a black-and-yellow insect struggling to free itself.
Whap! Goodbye, yellowjacket!
Ordinarily, I\’m immune to wasp stings. I usually get several over a summer; they smart for a few minutes, then they\’re forgotten.
This one was different. Over the next hour, I watched in fascination as the stung spot reddened and spread, like a napkin soaking up spilled merlot. Then the spot went white, like the yeasty white of frostbite, forming ragged tendrils that reached out through the reddened area, up my thumb, into my palm, across my wrist along my forearm.
Deserving respect
By the time I got to a doctor, my whole forearm was swelling up and hot.
Fortunately, I had no shortness of breath, no heart palpitations…
“Stings get more venomous at the end of summer,” the doctor told me. “You\’re fortunate – you\’re not suffering anaphylaxis.”
Life-threatening or not, my forearm was beginning to look like Popeye-the-Sailor-Man\’s exaggerated limb.
I shall treat wasps with more respect in future.
And they do indeed deserve respect. Because if – as sometimes seems likely – we humans exterminate ourselves by ingesting toxic chemicals we created, exposing ourselves to electromagnetic radiation, or manipulating genetic codes for private profit, I suspect that insects will inherit whatever\’s left of the earth.
Collective intelligence To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
Individually, insects are small, even insignificant. Personally, I don\’t like them. But they are remarkably efficient scavengers, cleaning up the detritus that larger animals scatter so liberally.
Insects have very small brains, compared to humans, whales, or elephants. But they can do something that seems impossible for us big-brained creatures – they can form a collective intelligence.
One ant, one wasp, one termite, will wander aimlessly, foraging for food. But put a certain number together, and they will immediately create a social structure that constructs astonishingly intricate architecture.
African termite colonies even have their own built-in air-conditioning. The sun\’s heat on one side of their mud towers sucks hot air out and sucks in cool air from the shaded side.
Roman Catholic theologian and cosmologist Diarmuid O\’Murchu theorizes that the human species may be extinct in as few as 150 years.
The dinosaur dynasty lasted 69 million years. Homo sapiens has been around about 200,000 years. We\’re not likely to threaten the dinosaurs\’ longevity.
But we need to remember that the end of humans would not necessarily mean the end of what we call God\’s creation. It will continue, whoever succeeds us.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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