The valley glows with borrowed warmth.
Today feels like early summer, though the maple leaves burn red beneath an autumn sky. This unexpected gift, so close to Halloween, draws me to the sun-warmed stones of the back patio—one last taste before winter.
I am not alone.
Yellowjacket wasps patrol the air, their bodies sharp as cut glass. They weave between planters, drawn to the overripe cherry tomatoes splitting in the heat and beginning to rot.
One lands on my motionless hand. Its antennae tap, tap, tap. Another crawls across my bare foot, six legs prickling my skin. Paralyzed, but with no loss of feeling, I watch, stone-still. My wheelchair offers no escape. Their wings hum with panic. Theirs. Mine. Time stretches until they lose interest. I wheel inside, leaving them to their desperate feast.
These are the workers of a dying colony. Through spring and summer, they served their queen—hunting to feed her young, nourished by the sweet nectar given in return by grateful larvae. They belonged to something larger. Purpose gave their lives meaning.
Late summer brings collapse. The queen slows her laying. Then stops. Then dies. Young queens mate and burrow deep, carrying next year’s promise in their bodies. The workers remain—first tending the final brood, then suddenly purposeless. No queen. No larvae. No nectar. The nest empties. Each wasp strikes out alone, just as the leaves begin to fall.
Hunters become drunks. Sisters murder sisters over fermenting fruit. Desperate for sugar, they dive into soda cans, guard stolen cake, and die by the thousands—stinging, stealing, starving. Separate. Suffering. Until the cruel frost drops them to the ground.
It’s easy to hate these autumn wasps—angry drunks at summer’s funeral. But watching them stagger between my tomato vines, intoxicated by rot, I recognize their plight. Each is a self splintered from the whole. Each terrified in a world suddenly stripped of purpose. Each chasing a fading sweetness as bitter days close in. Disoriented. Fighting the inevitable frost.
Friend, look closely, and the world will open to you like a book of boundless compassion.
This year, perhaps I’ll keep the hummingbird feeders full until the Christmas lights go up.
One Response
I live in Atlanta, GA, home of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Our long warm autumns last into December with football fans sporting their yellow and black college caps, banners and sweatshirts. That is a long way of saying that yellow jackets are just a fact of life where I live, Since my young son stumbled into one of their nests
many years ago, I am wary of them and have looked at them very differently than the other pollinators that I try to attract to my garden. Your reflection on their life cycle made me rethink my distaste for them. “ Look closely and the world will open to you like a book of boundless compassion.” So well said. So very well said.