Idiot Hornets

I was immensely relieved when the hornet nest in my backyard pecan tree collapsed, seemingly of its own volition, and rolled into the high grass. I had been agonizing for weeks over what to do about it, and now the problem had seemingly solved itself. But I waited a day before approaching the wreckage, and carefully, at that.

Much to my surprise, I found a single hornet, slowly circling the ruined hulk and ... doing something I couldn't figure out. There was a mist that issued periodically from the circling hornet in the direction of the hive. I had never paid any attention to hornet elimination techniques, but it looked like the thing might be urinating on the hive. As I leaned in for a closer look, I was brought up short by an angry buzzing.

"Back off, Bigstuff!" is what it sounded like.

"Hah!" I laughed. "How cute! That almost sounded like speech!"

"I'll give you cute, if you don't step away right now!" buzzed the hornet. "I got plenty of this stuff left for you, and I don't care how big you are!"

Now, that was pretty unequivocal.

"I'm sorry," I said, taking a hasty step back. "I didn't know you ... guys could talk. Um, pardon, but are you peeing on the hive?"

"Hey!" snapped the hornet. "That's disgusting! There's been a tragedy here. Have some respect!" Its buzz managed to convey tough-but-sensitive.

"I do beg your pardon," I replied, not insincerely. I suppose a hive crash would be a tragedy to a hornet. "Um, what happened? Exactly."

"Exactly?" buzzed the hornet, a bit sarcastically. "Some Bad Guys got in. I haven't been able to determine how many shooters there were yet. I'm making sure the hive is pacified first."

It looked pretty pacified to me, but I didn't say that. What I did say, lamely, was, "Shooters? Don't you mean stingers?"

"Stingers? Pah!" scoffed the hornet. "This is the cutting edge of self-defense technology."

One of its legs looked wrong, like it had some kind of tumor on it. Or it had just bashed itself hard with a hornet hammer. But I thought I'd better ask. "And what, exactly, is that?"

"With the 'exactly' again, eh? Well, it's an aerosol can of DDT, that's what it is!"

"And you were spraying that on your hive a minute ago?"

"Yeah," buzzed the hornet. "In case there were any Bad Guys still alive in there. Pardon me while I land on this twig for a minute. I'm feeling a little tired."

"You spray each other with DDT?" I gasped. "That's horrible!" I was considering something similar not 24 hours before, but they aren't my own species. Heck, they're barely in the same kingdom.

"What's horrible?" coughed the hornet defensively. "An insect has the right to defend itself."

"But ... that stuff is lethal to your kind." Not to mention everything else on the planet. "It kills hornets," I rephrased, in case it had missed the point.

"DDT doesn't kill hornets," said the hornet, with some difficulty. "Hornets kill hornets." Then it dropped, quite gently, from its twig to the foot of the ruined nest. I heard a tiny clink, which might have been the aerosol can hitting the ground.

I'm glad the nest is gone, but it's a bit sad. Still, what can you expect of such a stupid species?