The treetops are full of fog and small birds catching insects. Everything drips. A yellowjacket begins a slow inspection of the porch balustrade.
yellowjacket
When I adjust my chair, a stab of pain at the base of my middle finger: a yellow jacket, equally alarmed by the encounter, abdomen pulsing.
As the sun warms the red porch floor, more and more insects drop by to sunbathe: two yellowjackets, a paper wasp, a fat bluebottle fly.
Batting away a hornet hovering next to my legs—the softness of its wings. A chipmunk adds its metronome to the chorus of bird calls.
Four degrees above freezing. When I nudge the foot of a hornet clinging to the bottom of the railing, she swings her leg out in a slow arc.
Patches of frost in the yard. A yellow jacket from the underground nest in the garden lands on the shoulder of my sunlit coat.
A honeybee lands on the porch railing, and seconds later, a hornet lands four inches away. When the bee takes flight, so does the hornet.
The hornets stream in and out of their hole in the garden, departing to the south, returning from the east. A towhee calling in the dogwood.
A hornet nuzzles my arm like a hoverfly but doesn’t sting. In the garden, the buzz of hummingbirds dueling over scraps of bloom.
Weeding the garden is never dull. Yesterday morning a milk snake writhed around my wrist; today, hornets boil up and sting my hand.
Too hot for late October. A yellowjacket circles my pale face as if looking for a paper nest. A mantis lands upside-down beside the door.