Who, scared, me?
or the one about the murder hornets
“Are you at home? Yes? Then can you come downstairs?”
It was my landlord on the phone, about this time last year. When I joined him outside, he pointed far up, to the outside of the window of the small room opposite my apartment door. The word he used wasn’t one I was familiar with.
Some time earlier, I’d mentioned a swarm of bees that appeared to be nesting in the wall just outside the right kitchen window. “Bees are good luck,” was the reply. These, apparently, were not.
“They are dangerous! They bite you and you can die! I’m getting someone to come and take care of them.”
The someone, when he arrived, was a small, cheerful old man, wearing a rain jacket that covered nearly every visible part of him but his face. He was carrying a stout piece of wood several feet long, with cloth tied around one end, and a plastic Coca-Cola bottle filled with petrol.
I’d leaned out the window myself, earlier, to hastily snap a photo of the hive. It matched images online for an Asian giant hornet dwelling, aka the murder hornets that dominated the news for a brief spell back in 2020. I was relieved to learn that despite their moniker, it would take multiple hornets biting you at once to actually be fatal. Even so, I was glad that the landlord was prompt in dealing with it.
The old man opened up the window and leaned out. Unlike my quick glance, he was in no hurry, and I quickly realized that he was carrying the makings for a makeshift torch.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked as tried to both keep a safe distance and watch the proceedings.
He laughed with what seemed genuine amusement. He’d been in the army, he told me. This, it appeared, was nothing.
The man waved and poked and prodded, flame flying. The hornet hive fell, burning, to our building’s small bike parking area, where I found pieces for days. I believe him when he said he wasn’t scared, but I was still relieved when he’d finished, safely.
It took a while before the hornets left for good: they hung around the pieces of the nest that still stuck to the window, and for a while, as they buzzed between there and my balcony plants, I worried they might rebuild.
For the record. Asian giant hornets look as scary in real life as they do pictures, truly a bit of nature to be respected and steered clear of, and they did eventually move on to make their home somewhere else. Looking up, I still have no idea how the nest ever got spotted from the alley.