Wasp Season

by Jennifer Scoullar

  It was with a sense of single-minded purpose that Zenandra departed her home for the last time. She desired to mate. This was her first flight of any significance. With the confidence of youth she decided to see how high she could fly. Up and up she spiraled, losing all bearings, aware only of the vast, formless landscape beneath her and the shining, blinding clarity of the sky above. Immense joy overtook her as she dipped and swerved, testing her flight skills to the limit. Several passing birds showed some interest in the swooping insect, but made no attempt to attack her. Brilliant colouring alerted all to the danger of her sting.

  Tired at last, she dropped from the sky, eager for a rest and something to eat. For some time she searched the uniformly grey-green bushland for a promising place to land. A flash of scarlet attracted her attention and she flew in its direction. Within a few minutes, she arrived at a bank of red flowering Bottlebrush. Although these blossoms were not found in her native Europe, Zenandra quickly adapted to the unfamiliar food source. Instinct was not her only guide. She also possessed a surprising capacity to learn. Hungrily she crawled over the blooms, sharing the sweet nectar with a host of other insects. She was not in predator mode and the native bees and brightly painted butterflies had nothing to fear from her yet.

  After she ate her fill, she decided to explore beyond the Bottlebrush. To her delight, ahead of her lay a green oasis within the dry bushland. Beth’s garden. Surrounding the house were extensive beds of exotic f lowers, interspersed with drought-resistant clumps of Australian native plants. Dotted over the green lawn were a multitude of tiny yellow and white daisies. Several stone birdbaths, brimming with water, stood about the gardens. A large variety of insects already lived here, and she noted the abundance of potential prey with satisfaction. Zenandra alighted on the roof of Beth’s tool shed and took stock of her surroundings.

  She was not the only wasp attracted to this welcoming place. Half a dozen drones of her own species already resided here. Their primary raison d’être was sex. They could not expect to survive the coming winter, as could a large and healthy queen such as Zenandra. A drone’s biological clock ticked fast. Their need to pass on their genes required them to mate quickly before the cooler weather killed them and thus their libido was overwhelming.

  It didn’t take long for the drones to become aware of the presence of the young virgin queen. Her body emitted a chemical attractant, a pheromone, irresistible to males of her own species. One by one, the male wasps detected her chemical signal and began an intense search for its source. An eager male discovered her, as she hovered uncertainly above a birdbath, contemplating how to safely slake her thirst. The combination of the scent and sight of her, spurred the young drone into a sexual frenzy. Vividly coloured bands on her body served as a sign of her fertility and readiness to copulate.

  Dispensing with pleasantries, he dived and swiftly grasped her in mid-flight. Straddling her body, he gripped her tightly beneath him with his legs and his mandibles. Caught by surprise, Zenandra at first perceived the drone’s actions as an assault. Aggressively, she extended her sting, thus giving the enthusiastic drone a clear pathway to her genital opening. With a sharp downward twist, he inserted the tip of his abdomen deeply into her. With a shock of pleasure, she relaxed and drew her sting partly back into her body. The drone, while still astride his queen, tenderly stroked her to keep her calm. It would be fatal for him, if she mistook his purpose.

  The pair came to rest on a yellow daisy flower, and remained there, inconspicuous, until mating was over. The extraordinary gentleness of the drone was partly self-serving. Startling his lover now could result in a deadly attack. However there was no doubting the shared sensuousness of the encounter. During intercourse, he rapidly vibrated his antennae against hers; an action that seemed to keep the young queen completely mesmerised. When mating was complete, he caressed her feelers with the curved tips of his own for several minutes. As the pair’s sexual excitement diminished, the male slowly withdrew his penis from Zenandra’s genital opening. This allowed her to draw her sting wholly back into her abdomen. It had remained fully exposed and to one side during the sex act. The drone now dismounted from her body.

  They rested for a few moments, side by side, grooming themselves and regaining their composure. Within a few minutes, the male wasp returned to a state of high alertness. He tilted his head from side to side, sensing the presence of another receptive queen nearby. Soon he buzzed away, consumed all over again with the urgency of his sexual needs. The sheer physical effort of his mating behaviour would soon kill him, but not before he succeeded in his mission to transfer his genes to the new generation.

  Zenandra took a while longer to recover from the encounter. Unlike her doomed mate, she had the luxury of a generous life span, by insect standards. She could expect to live for fifteen months or more. However she also repeated this courtship ritual with different suitors on several occasions over the coming days. Multiple matings increased her chances of collecting a sufficient supply of healthy sperm, which she stored deep in her abdomen. Finally her womb was replete with the seed of the next generation, and her sexual energy was spent. The sperm collected over this one wild week remained viable over her entire lifetime, available whenever she needed to fertilise her eggs. She would never mate again.

  Her body ceased to produce the volatile odour, which so aroused the drones. Her vivid colours faded a little. She signalled her unwillingness to mate in other ways too, by adopting a slower, less showy flight pattern, and actively avoiding any interested drone. When a persistent young male failed to take the hint, she moved her legs and abdomen into a position where it was difficult for him to make contact, and she used her sting to physically block the entrance to her genital opening as a kind of waspine chastity belt. Eventually the amorous drone abandoned his attempt. After all, there were other young queens in the garden available for nuptial flights.

  For the remainder of the autumn, the queen enjoyed all the garden had to offer. She fed on windfall apples and peaches, growing fat and sleek. She explored the surrounding bushland by day, suiting herself as to where she went and where she slept. On warm nights, when the full moon illuminated the garden, she defied the diurnal customs of her kind, and soared up into the darkness towards the dazzling, silver orb. Spiraling higher and higher, amongst the moths and other nocturnal insects, she experienced great joy and a feeling of being in unison with creation.

  As the days lengthened and grew colder, Zenandra fed furiously, building up her body reserves for the ordeal of hibernation. Eventually she disappeared into Beth’s garden shed, finding a snug bed in the fingertip of an old leather gardening glove. The cooling temperatures induced in her body a deep torpor. It was a state very much like death. She became absolutely unresponsive to touch, light, or sound. In such a condition she was able to endure temperatures well below freezing. Her metabolism slowed to the point where it could not be measured. Her body became dehydrated. The only protection afforded to her cells from the cold, was a minute quantity of glycerine in her blood that functioned as a natural anti-freeze. The queen now entered a state of genuine suspended animation that even halted aging. This mysterious process, if properly understood, could provide the key to a new era in science. Cryogenics, long distance space travel, organ preservation, even eternal youth; all might well be possible, if humans could achieve what the little wasp queen and her ancestors quietly achieved every winter for millions of years. Thus she remained, corpse-like, until the following spring. Then rising temperatures, and lengthening daylight hours, triggered a physiological resurrection. Miraculously, she rose from the dead, none the worse for her extraordinary experience, to establish this flourishing colony beneath Beth’s woodpile.

  Zenandra reviewed her life and work with considerable satisfaction. But she was not through yet. Her destiny remained incomplete without the successful survival of this new crop of royals. Nothing must interfere with her grand purpose. The wasps were now forced to increase even further their r
uthless hunting efficiency. The royal larvae required abundant high quality protein. Although the local native wasp population had over time been destroyed, the European wasps still faced competition for food from other wasps of their own species. Workers could easily identify those from different nests by their odour. An uneasy truce existed between these tribes. The pressure was on, and life was about to become even more difficult for the remaining insects who made their home in Beth’s garden.

  CHAPTER 20

  Beth trotted her horse along the drive on a loose rein. The mare’s fine black coat was lathered with sweat, and her veins stood out as shiny black sinews underneath her satin skin. With nostrils flared wide, she gulped down lungfuls of fresh air, her heart beating fast. It had been a hard ride. Galloping at punishing speeds through the bush was Beth’s latest way of letting off steam. Shannon, her Anglo Arabian mare, thoroughly enjoyed these wild rides, though she was a little puzzled by the change in tempo. Riding with her mistress had previously been a much more sedate affair.

  Horse and rider headed down the hill to the stable yard, both looking forward to a cool drink. Beth dismounted and swore under her breath when she saw the empty trough. An uncommonly dry summer left water reserves low. Bits and pieces of rotting leaves, usually safely out of the way on the bottom of the water tanks, found their way into the pipes and mechanisms, blocking the flow. Such blockages plagued the water supply systems around the property over the last few weeks. Beth was left with no alternative but to use the house supply to water the stock until her handyman found time to fix it. Ted seemed reluctant to come out to Beth’s property since the wasp incident. Beth wondered how he would feel if he realised that the nest had not yet been destroyed.

  She unsaddled her tired mare. A slight movement in the empty trough caught her eye. A small spider was trapped there by the steep, slippery sides. Beth looked about for a stick with which to rescue the hapless spider from its predicament. As she leant over to save it, a European wasp appeared. It grabbed the unfortunate spider and deftly amputated all eight of its legs. Seconds later it was gone, carrying its disabled, but still living victim, back to the nest to suffer a terrifying and painful death.

  Beth was horrified. If only she’d acted more quickly to save the little spider. Split seconds sometimes stand between life and death, and death now stalked the insects of Beth’s garden without pity. Despite her empathy with the wasp queen, she conceded it was time to exterminate the nest. Disturbing tales were beginning to circulate. One neighbour told of finding a dead cow one evening in his paddock. He returned early the next morning on his tractor to remove it. The entire carcass was covered by thousands of European wasps. He was unable to get anywhere near it, such was the aggression of the swarm. Other scavengers, such as Wedge-Tailed Eagles and foxes, were savagely attacked and driven off. Even flies, attempting to blow the bloated body of the cow, were seized and transported back to the nest, to be fed to the hordes of hungry larvae. So the cow remained rotting where it lay, a seething mass of black and gold, slowly and surely being consumed by the voracious insects.

  Many similar stories were doing the rounds. The one that provoked the most disquiet was that of a stockman, whose horse stumbled onto a nest up in the high country. The outraged insects attacked in their thousands, causing the terrified horse to bolt with his rider over the rough, timber-strewn ground. A wombat hole, concealed by a fallen Gum tree, lay in their path, causing the panic-stricken steed to fall heavily, throwing his rider. The fallen stockman, suffering many painful stings, made a dash on foot to a nearby farm dam. When he finally went in search of his horse, he found the unfortunate animal quite dead, and covered in feeding wasps. Upon returning days later to recover his bridle and saddle, a gruesome scene confronted him. Gaping sockets indicated where the wasps had eaten away the animal’s eyes, possibly before death. Likewise its genitals, lips and anus showed signs of attack. The shape of the horse’s body was grossly distorted by masses of stings, causing ugly swellings and lesions all over its hide.

  Beth was familiar with these stories, but until very recently she regarded them with a high degree of scepticism. Now she was not so sure. It was increasingly apparent that the wasps were causing serious damage. Her late summer garden, that should have been abuzz with a wide variety of insects, seemed barren of life. Even the frogs on the dam had fallen silent. During previous summers Beth loved to hear the evening symphony of frog calls. This summer, not even the croak of the Eastern Banjo frog, quaintly known as the ‘pobblebonk’, broke the stillness at dusk. Beth assumed that the absence of frogs was due to the summer drought. But only the day before, having ventured down to the dam to investigate, she was surprised to discover that the water level, although low, should still have been perfectly adequate to sustain the frog population.

  Again Beth stood at the water’s edge, sensing that the dam had changed in some undefined way. Then it struck her. The surface of the dam, usually swarming with water boatmen, dragonflies, midges, damselflies, mosquitoes and a host of other aquatic insects, was calm and empty. Peering into the murky shallows, she saw no sign of the mosquito larvae, water beetles, nymphs or tadpoles that normally thrived there. A patch of blue-green algae spread a toxic bloom across one corner of the dam. Without the usual aquatic inhabitants feeding on it, the algae thrived unchecked. It occurred to Beth that the frogs might be competing unsuccessfully with the wasps for food. But as she turned to go, she saw something that made her think that they played a more direct role in the disappearance of the amphibians. Two partly decomposed frog corpses sprawled from under a log, their little arms outstretched, their tiny hands with open fingers seemed to beseech Beth’s help. Several wasps were busy slicing frog flesh. Whether the insects were predators or scavengers seemed immaterial. It was clear that the dam’s once vibrant ecosystem was destroyed and the wasps once again were the likely culprits.

  Beth could no longer ignore the mounting evidence and the attack that morning on the spider confirmed her decision. The nest must go. She turned out her mare and returned to the house where she sat weighing-up different extermination options. The ringing phone distracted her. To her surprise it was Helen.

  Beth had not spoken to Helen since Christmas, but she understood that Mark and Helen’s relationship was in deep trouble and that her husband’s behaviour was becoming disturbingly erratic. Although Mark was still adamant about filing for custody, Beth felt more and more like he was just using this as a bargaining tool. His desire to be a full time Dad to his older children just didn’t ring true. While one minute he was threatening to take the kids, the next he was trying to effect a reconciliation with Beth, insisting it might be the only way for her to retain full custody. It was unlikely that Helen wanted the children full time. Beth wondered how the jealous young woman would react if she knew that her husband was attempting to reconcile with his former wife.

  “Hello? Are you still there Beth?”

  The insistent voice on the telephone interrupted her reverie.

  “Yes Helen. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  “Well we are talking now aren’t we? What is it?”

  “No. I want to see you in person if that’s O.K. Would you mind if I came to visit? How would this afternoon be?”

  Beth was thinking on her feet. Perhaps this could work to her advantage; to let Helen know of the completeness of her partner’s betrayal. After all, further subverting this shaky relationship would damage any hope Mark had of a victory in the family court.

  “Alright then. The kids get home on the bus at 4.30. You will need to be gone by then.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you around one. Bye.”

  Beth put down the phone, feeling more than a little confused. This meeting would suit her own agenda. What she didn’t understand was how it would suit Helen’s. Did Helen intend to warn her off Mark? A needless exercise. Mark made Beth’s skin crawl. However Beth could not afford to reassure Helen in any way, as
her interests were best served by destabilising things. Although uncomfortable with the dishonesty of this approach, she felt that she owed Helen no favours.

  CHAPTER 21

  An hour later Helen arrived on Beth’s doorstep. She spent several minutes tapping unsuccessfully on the heavy timber front door while Beth observed her with interest from an upstairs window. The young woman periodically knocked at the door and then peered in the window in an attempt to catch someone’s attention. As usual, she was dressed in a revealing halter-necked top and cut-off jeans, her slim brown legs teetering on top of shiny, stiletto-heeled sandals. After what must have seemed to Helen an inordinately long time, Beth slowly descended the spiral staircase to receive her visitor. She was pleasantly aware that this little encounter was to be very much on her terms.

  Beth finally opened the door and invited the young woman inside. Helen cradled Chance in an aching left arm. Beth had never before taken much notice of the baby. He was seven months old now, engagingly alert with a sweet, melting smile. With a shock Beth recognised Rick in Chance’s charming expression. It unnerved her. Helen put the baby on the floor with a toy or two, and ignored Beth’s half-hearted offers of hospitality.