Lost the Battle but Won the War!

We often like to catch, keep, and study wild animals and insects, we also like the challenge of battling wasps and hornets! It’s not always a victory, and we are sometimes bitten or stung in the process. Some bites and stings are barely noticeable, while others can be extremely painful. When I was only ten, I was stung very near the eye by a paper wasp!

My brothers and I had once decided to take out a nest of about 5 or 10 paper wasps who had made nest in our basketball hoop! Each wasp was about 3/4-inches long and could fly at a speed of 7 to 8 mph! When we arrived at where the battle was to take place, we ran into a problem. How would we make the wasps come out? Our question was answered when one of us spotted all the basketballs lying around!

Armed with tennis rackets, whiffle ball bats, and sticks, we each sent a volley of basketballs directly at the nest! Most of the balls had hit the target, and after they had bounced off and we had waited a few seconds, we heard a familiar buzzing sound! Suddenly, out from the nest came a swarm of 15 to 20 furiously mad paper wasps! We all stood in silence for about three seconds, surprised at the unexpected number of the enemy. Then, after getting over our surprise, we attacked, and the battle started. A few lessons we all learned a long time ago, was that there was no surrender, turning your back was a good way to get stung, never stop swinging your weapon, and pay close attention to everything around you. We swung our weapons wildly, ducking and dodging as the wasps flew about our heads. Down went one insect, then a second! The war was in our favor! Our rivals were losing! We could smell victory in the air! We slowly advanced as we forced our foe backwards. The war was so close to ending then and there, but that all changed in just a few milliseconds.

There I was, in the front lines fighting my way toward the nest. I was getting close; only a few more feet until I would have the nest destroyed! That’s when I made my first mistake. I was busy swinging my tennis racket, when I decided to take out the nest. I made a run for it, and as I arrived, I turned and called out my accomplishment, but as I did, I broke rule number 3! I stopped swinging my weapon! When I turned back around to deal with the nest, I was met face to face with a wasp! I swung my racket, but the wasp was faster! It managed to slip past my weapon, land on the bottom eyelid of the left eye, where it ejected its painful stinger and released its poison! The poison was not fatal, but it felt like I was just hit in the eye by a metal baseball bat! My hand went to my eye in a flash, and I started swinging my racket even faster! That wasp that had stung me was still buzzing around my face, because unlike honeybees, a wasp can sting as many times as it desires! I was part mad, stunned, surprised, and a little afraid that the wasp might sting me again! That’s why when I hit the wasp, the force from the tennis racket completely obliterated it!

Once I was satisfied with my revenge, I started to really feel the pain from the sting. I ran off the battlefield calling to retreat! We all regrouped at the porch where I explained what had happened. By then, my eye had started to swell a good bit, and it was decided that we would hold any further attacks until the following day.

I walked inside the house and told Mom what had happened. She said to chew up some plantain leaf and put it on the wound. I strayed about looking for the plant, and when I found it, I followed the directions given to me. I was starting to get a bit worried; my eye was getting big! I went back inside the house, and with the chewed-up plantain leaf on my eye, I laid on our couch. It was getting late, and was sure my eye would heal overnight, so I went to bed.

The following day when I awoke and tried to open my eyes, my right one opened, but the left would not move! My thoughts were instantly turned toward what had happened the day before! I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to look in the hallway mirror. When I did however, I saw that my eye had swollen to the size of a golf ball and was completely shut! I was terrified! I didn’t know what to do, how could I walk around looking like this? Luckily it was the beginning of the week, and by the time Sunday rolled around, my eye was almost as good as new.

 

Once I was able to see with both eyes, we tried retaking the basketball hoop, but the wasps were alert and active and getting close enough to fight was next to impossible. We didn’t give up however, we just broke out our secret weapon, wasp spray! We did lose the battle, but we won the war!

~Samuel