Evening star., 1949-09-16
This and That
By Charles E. TyaceweU

"The melancholy days have come,
The saddest of the year.
So wrote a poet Of yesteryear.
1t is verse many persons do not under
stand, as simple as the wording.
They are thinking Of the wrong thing.
why. autumn is the best time we have "
they assert. "And especially October; around
here, is the brightest, happiest month Of the
year."
That may be all right for humans.
It is the insect world that makes for sad
ness.
When one thinks Of the destruction and
death brought to the bright singers Of the
night, to the innumerable bees and wasps,
one will sense what the poet had In mind.
The wasps in the windowsill were notion
less that morning the temperature went
down to so degrees F.
There were 10 Of them, the same number
that began.
II there were any small ones, they had
flown away.
Only the faithful 10 remained. huddled
over the small aggregation Of "A cells.
There was no movement this morning.
The wasp wings did not come to alert, as
the window shade went up and enough Of
the curtain to show them between window
pane and screen.
Usually the wings rise, and there Is some
movement, but this morning the wasp bodies
were too cold for motion.
It was preview of what was to come for
them.
The whole thought Of the wasps was on
the two white-capped lower cells.
These are to be the queens who are to live
over the winter and carry on the race.
No imperfect females or Grass males will
come from these royal nurseries.
The glorious autumn weather will speed
death to this group. To all, that is, except
the queens. which will live over the cold to
begin new life next spring.
It is sad, if one chooses to see it that way.
Now they are all alive and working, happy
in the sunshine, accepting the colder wealth
er as best they can.
Soon the real cold will strike and then
things will be different. There will be no
insects to gather in for food. There will be
starvation for them all, except the queens.
These ladies will, in the end, succumb to the
lure of eating the last of the larvae and such
remaining worker eggs as they can find.
The group will die, including the old parent
queens, now no longer needed by nature.
One by one they will wither, with none to
do them reverence except, perhaps, pair
Of lonely eyes watching at the window.
The young males will live just long enough
to mate with the young queens.
Then they will die, leaving the two queens.
which will seek shelter not in the nest, but
in more secure place, such as an attic.
There are usually few cracks large enough
for them to wedge through.
We will be sorry to see the wasp family 20.
It Is difncult to be sure about 1t, but they
seemed an amateur group, spending 20 much
time to accomplish so little.
Perhaps that is life, even ct its best. "And
no one knew what it had lived and died for,
striving and striving, and an ending in
nothing So wrote wise woman long ago.
The wasps are near the end Of their tether
The cold winds that will bring invigoration
to humankind will end their lives. Each
sort Of life in this strange world has its own
laws and must come and go by them the
best 1t can. In this respect wasps and bees
are on par with man. They have their
Joy in the sunshine. then receive the boon
Of swift death In the cold. They (unlike
man with his bombs and other awful deatias)
add nothing Of insult to life. They have
taken life as they found it and done their
best with it. Man can scarcely make the
same claim - t#Sasss 81 sassssszess y S