Little Things

A wasp has joined me at my perch on the couch this morning, its onion-skin wings folded tightly and in perfect alignment with the rest of its sharp and angular little 1” body. It meanders across the brown arm of the sofa, changing direction, doubling back, nearing the edge and retreating. Almost the same color as the pretend leather fabric, I wouldn’t know it was there save for catching its jerky walk on its spindly legs in my peripheral vision. The kittens are fixed in fascination from their spot below on the carpet, their yellow eyes following its every slow and painstaking move to some unknown destination.

I’m paying close attention as well, having administered in the past my share of baking soda poultices to soothe stings that neither of us had planned (looking back, I’m sure it was my fault and not the wasp’s). I’m not going to kill it. I just want to keep it in sight. They’re less aggressive in the winter, and when they do make an appearance in some room of the house, they resemble a hungover party guest trying to figure our where he put his socks and his car keys. We’ve all been there, so we don’t make a scene; we just work our daily comings and goings around them, and keep a careful eye on where they wander off to next. As I look past this one through the living room windows and into the snowy landscape on the ridge, I don’t begrudge him his decision to tuck in somewhere warm. I return my eyes to the arm of the sofa, and he’s gone. Well. Ok. Shake out the lap throws and turn over the pillows. And walk carefully across the multi-colored boho patchwork area rug that’s a perfect hideout for anything brown with legs.

We never know who our roommates are in this old and crevice-filled abode. Mostly, they remain unseen and silent, especially the insects. We have a rather unsettling fondness for our spiders; they keep the fly and no-see-um population in perfect check, so it seems unwise to evict or execute them simply because their many legs and small size put others off a bit. They work hard for a living and teach us daily that patience is essential for survival. But to put a houseguest at ease, we will employ the cup-and-index-card evacuation tactic so that the rest of the visit can unfold in peace. We don’t judge, just accommodate.

But these little lives that intersect with ours are precious to us, even when the sight of them in swarms or many-legged gangs make our skin crawl. We’re awed at their organized communities. We watch as they gather food, survive the sub-zero winters, care for their offspring, perform the tiniest of mating dances and sometimes simply buzz about our heads for no apparent reason. I remember one afternoon in May when Patrick and I were outside on the grass, stripping cedar branches of their needles to dry and use in ceremony, when a flock of dragonflies (“swarm” just isn’t the right word here, though it is probably the more entomologically correct one. Allow me a bit of poetic license here) zigged and zagged inches from our ball-capped heads. We could hear them, there were that many that close by. Draw whatever conclusions you wish on the spiritual meaning of this encounter. We were charmed and delighted right down to our skivvies and now look for them each spring, with or without the scent of fresh cedar on our fingertips.

I get why most folks cringe or look for the nearest shoe to use as a weapon when dealing with all manner of creeping and crawling things. They’re small, they can get into places we’d rather not have them (the classic “they’ll find their way up my trouser leg” fear), and once they’re in there, bite things we’d rather they didn’t bite. Plus, when they reproduce they do so with seeming teeming reckless abandon. Clearly no one in insect circles teaches abstinence or any form of birth control. Have you ever seen those moving columns of gnats or mosquitoes just suspended in mid-air when you’re out for your morning walk? We’re outnumbered and always have been. Entomophobia seems a healthy fear to allow, if not actually nurture, in our two-legged nuclear family species.

But one five-minute segment of the evening news is all I need to put spiders in perspective. If I’m gonna work up the energy to fly off the couch in a panic, it will be about the Big Scary Things, too large to go unnoticed, too big to crawl up a trouser leg and catch me unawares, too heavy to scoop up in a glass and relocate in the hydrangeas outside. And I’ve lived through Big Scary Things, so I’m not romanticizing the contrast here. Tiny living things demand our attention in a different way, inviting our observant eye to notice how they manage in a world so much bigger than they are. They take their place on a vast food chain beyond their control, hunker down and get about their buggy business without complaint. And in large numbers, they command our respect, sometimes from a safe distance, lest we think we were here first. We’re bigger, sure, but not always better. It’s good to remember that every now and again.

If humility I must learn, give me a wasp on the arm of a sofa any day.