The Yellow Jacket War or St. Francis Takes up Arms

I’m a modern-day St. Francis; the kind of guy who, after a rain, scoops up earthworms doomed to die upon the driveway and places them in the flower bed. I know that a bee’s sting costs it its life. So when I see one upon the sidewalk, stingerless and struggling, I quickly put it out of its misery. I’ve saved a lizard’s life by swooping into a murder of crows and plucking it from their midst.

So why was it, then, that yellow jackets in my neighbor’s hedge made war with me? They should’ve gotten on their tiny knees and prayed I didn’t smite them unto death – which I eventually did, the ungrateful little buggers.

Every time I’d go to water the front lawn – which I do to keep the grass alive – they’d run sorties at my head, sending me screaming down the block, waving my hands like a madman. I’d see curtains moving in windows and realize whatever equity I’d managed to build with those living within earshot was gone.

In an attack two weeks ago, I took a sting to the back of the hand. Last week, one of their aces got under my belt. Hit and hurt badly, I ripped off my pants to find it had gotten me in the -- I thought -- protective layer of fat I keep about my waistline. I felt the glare of the neighbors, looking on in horror and scorn, but it was a full minute before I could clear my trousers of the intruder. Sure enough, it had flown off, free to attack again upon the morrow.

It never got the chance. I had turned the other cheek and had it stung. I had come in peace, but it was time now for war.

Snatching my keys with one hand and holding up my pants with the other, I flew to Orchard Supply Hardware. What an armory it was! I could spray their little nest to death. I could bomb to smithereens an area twice that size, taking out surrounding shrubs. I could foam them up close and personal. I could hit them from a distance of 12 feet.

Something in my gut told me to strike from afar and as toxically as possible.

Minutes later, it was over. I felt terrible for what I’d done. I watched in pity as fliers returning from missions elsewhere staggered around their home now dripping in napalm, their loved ones suddenly still as stones. It pained me to see them flit from one side of ground zero to the other, then float slowly, souls crushed, off into the sky.

But that’s just me, St. Francis, friend to all living things.