Today, for the second time, my work table performed the miracle of resurrection. B brought me a giant wasp nest from a work site, (it is a thing I like to incorporate into pieces). I asked him if he was sure nothing lived within.
Yep. he said. So we went to bed.
In the morning, woke.
Went downstairs to make pancakes.
When I came back upstairs to get a thing, I noticed that, How strange! There is a wasp on the door. I haven’t seen a wasp in weeks.
Then my brain made the connection: wasp = wasp nest.
I looked toward my table. The nest was crawling with wasps.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
I ran downstairs.
Downstairs, I was grateful to meet an expert wasp-bagger.
The self-same man who delivered them, in fact.
He said to me: ‘Impossible. They are all dead.’
Do the dead sting? I wondered.
These should-not-be-alive wasps did not sting. Us. But this was surely because there was an expert wasp-bagger on hand.
‘They are supposed to be dead.’ he said with the exquisite reason of a wasp-bagger.
I wonder what they think about supposed-to-be-dead. I thought as the nest flew out of the bag, off the third-floor porch and into the November morning.