For a few minutes in the afternoon a couple of days ago I
had blocked it all out, had fallen asleep on the couch. I woke up from a quiet
bumping sound, faintly familiar even to my barely awake brain. A bee, I
clarified after a moment or two. Or a bumble bee. This had happened before,
though I never could quite figure out how they managed to get into the living
room when all the doors were closed and the windows had fly screens. I rubbed
the sleep from my eyes and got up to see if something needed my help getting
back to freedom. What I saw made me recoil in horror: about five centimetres
long, black body beautifully setting off orange legs, antennae, eyes, wings and
two abdominal stripes PLUS a stinger about a centimeter long, this was the
biggest, most deadly looking wasp or hornet I had ever seen. I immediately
recalled the face with its yellow compound eyes that had stared at me in a
recent news post, a post I had glanced at in passing thinking that was all a
big hoax. Now, I wasn’t so sure: this could be nothing else but the feared
Asian giant (or ‘murder’) hornet!
I carefully backed away and, after another glance, quickly
looked it up on my phone. Yes, for sure: size and looks suggested that my assumption
was right. I read about the reason why they are feared so much: they can wreak
havoc in a bee hive, cleanly biting off the bees’ heads, leaving behind a mound
of corpses. Yet it puzzled me how this exotic insect could have found its way
here to our still rather cool Alberta when so far the only specimens in North
America had been found on the west coast, and the only two in Canada, on
Vancouver Island, had been dead.
Then it dawned on me: early that morning my husband had
brought the still-boxed new oven into the kitchen where it was now waiting to
be unpacked and connected. Bought online from Costco it was brought here by a
delivery truck the day before and had spent a day in the shop. Who knows where
this load had originated? It all made sense, but did nothing to ease my
anxiety. Three young grandchildren were downstairs, so far blissfully unaware
of the unwelcome visitor, which was a good thing: they would have been thrilled
to inspect it more closely. I thought of deadly venom and a murder hornet
escaping to attack local beehives. I needed to do something, and fast.
But who to call? There is no longer an Alberta Agriculture
office in town, which would have been the easiest approach. The agronomist from
the fertilizer dealership gave me the number of an entomologist with Alberta
Agriculture, but the number was out of service. The biology department at the
university might be able to give advice, but in my state of panic I couldn’t
find a number. I had lost sight of the beast while I was on the phone, and now
I couldn’t find it anywhere near the window anymore. I didn’t think it had
flown by me; the loud buzzing and frenetic beating of wings I had observed at
first suggested that it would not fly quietly, and it was certainly big enough
to not pass me unseen.
A friend found several numbers for the Alberta Entomological
Society for me, and I called first one at the U of C, leaving a message with a
few details, then another at the U of A. Here, I reached a lab technician
without specific bee and wasp experience, but she gave me the email of her supervisor.
I wrote to her with the two slightly fuzzy photos I had taken right away. That
was all I could do for the moment; that, and steer the grandchildren by the
living room on their way out of the house. They agreed reluctantly and only
after I promised to pass on any information I would receive. My daughter-in-law
had found the intruder, which was now sitting under a table near the window.
Good. At least I knew where it was.
First, I got a call back from Calgary. A friendly gentleman started
by calming my fears: as long as it wasn’t feeling threatened the hornet would
not attack, he assured me, since defending itself or its nest were the reasons
for any member of the hymenoptera family to attack. The fear of it escaping and
causing mayhem in a beehive was, as I had come to realize, not warranted
either. What could a single insect do, even if it did escape?
If this really was a giant Asian hornet—and it sounded quite
possible from my description, the entomologist agreed, even though it was
unlikely in any other way—the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton would surely be
interested. He explained how to catch it, at first thinking I might keep it
alive for a day or two until I could drop it off. ‘They are meat eaters,’ he
said, ‘you could just give it small pieces of tuna and a bit of sugar water.’ Really!
Since it seemed a bit impractical to keep it alive in a jar when I had no idea
when I would be able to go to the city during spring seeding from our location
an hour away, the only reasonable alternative was to kill it carefully so as to
not damage it. ‘The most humane method,’ I was told, ‘is to capture it in a jar
and put it in the freezer.’ That would be an imitation of the natural process
that happens in late fall, a gentle slipping into eternal sleep, so to speak.
It wouldn’t feel a thing …
I thought about this later. Here was someone who cared about
the feelings of an insect, a fellow being, yes, but one most people wouldn’t
think twice about killing, even less consider how to treat it with gentleness.
I realized how far I had moved from who I had been as a child and adolescent,
how much more hardened I had become. A wasp nest under the mailbox? In the
weather station? Over the patio door? All good intentions to not disturb them
fall by the wayside when a swarm hits on you to defend its nest. So: wait till
dark and spray it with wasp killer, the safest and easiest way to get rid of
them.
I was strangely moved by this so different way of treating
what is almost everywhere considered a pest, was gently reminded that these,
too, are sentient beings. By now my horror and fear had subsided, and I knew I
would be able to treat this insect with respect, even though it would die. I
went to the shelf with the jam jars in the basement to look for one with a big
enough opening to accommodate its considerable size and, armed with that and a
piece of cardboard, went about the task of capturing it. I found it sitting at
the window once again, quiet now, put the glass jar over it, slid the cardboard
between the window pane and the jar opening and had it captive. I quickly
screwed on the lid and now had opportunity to look at it without having to fear
an attack. It was quite beautiful with its stunning colours. I could measure it
now, too, and found that it was a bit smaller than I had guessed, the body
about 4 or 4.5 cm long, the stinger—still scary to behold, looking like a formidable
weapon—a little less than a centimetre, maybe. I put it in the freezer with the
idea of taking it to the curator at the Royal Alberta Museum when I got a
chance.
Not much later I found a reply from the contact at the U of
A where I had sent the email with the photos. She wrote that this didn’t look
like one of the Asian giant hornets to her: the colouring was wrong, the
antennae should be black, not orange, and the face showed too little yellow or
orange. She would get back to me once she had identified it with more
certainty. The next email arrived with the
news that this was, though from the hymenoptera family like
wasps, bees and ants, something totally different and quite harmless: a
horntail sawfly, likely of the genus Urocerus.
She sent a link, and I recognized my ‘murder hornet’ immediately. What I
had called a stinger is in fact an ovipositor, used to deposit eggs into
plants. In this horntail sawfly’s case the plant is a dead or decaying tree
trunk, which means its ovipositor needs to be that strong and long. Now I felt
bad that I had put an end to its life. Yet the question remains how this
insect, usually living in the foothills and boreal forest, had found its way into our living room.
Unless
more will show up as spring and summer progress I suspect that will remain a
mystery. Maybe its sole purpose was to teach me something about the natural
world I would not otherwise have learned, and to once again remind me what I knew
so well as a child: that every creature, no matter how lowly or even repugnant it seems to us, is a wonder to
behold and needs to be treated with respect.
 |
| Finally: the Mayday is starting to bloom |
Update, a few days later:
Early this evening I found another horntail sawfly at the living room window. This time I knew I didn't have to be afraid of it, nor did I have to worry about any damage it might do. I still have no idea where they came from, but I decided to give this one the opportunity to find its way to where it needs to be (which most certainly can't be our living room). I carefully caught it in a jar, took it outside and put it on an old stump near the garden. It sat still for a moment, then, wings whirring, it lifted off, turned around and flew into the sunset. Where might its destination be? I will never find out, but I would dearly like to know if these insects have been living in our bush all these years without me ever seeing one, if they have migrated from the foothills or boreal forest, or if they hitched a ride from somewhere. Who knows, maybe the next one is already on its way ...
Early this evening I found another horntail sawfly at the living room window. This time I knew I didn't have to be afraid of it, nor did I have to worry about any damage it might do. I still have no idea where they came from, but I decided to give this one the opportunity to find its way to where it needs to be (which most certainly can't be our living room). I carefully caught it in a jar, took it outside and put it on an old stump near the garden. It sat still for a moment, then, wings whirring, it lifted off, turned around and flew into the sunset. Where might its destination be? I will never find out, but I would dearly like to know if these insects have been living in our bush all these years without me ever seeing one, if they have migrated from the foothills or boreal forest, or if they hitched a ride from somewhere. Who knows, maybe the next one is already on its way ...
