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Summer travels, and a heckler gets his
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Published: September 19, 2009
Shadows are lengthening. Days are shorter. Summer is on the wane.
Birds and butterflies are migrating south. Many have departed. Many more will congregate in the days to come to make the journey together.
They carry bits and pieces of summer with them when they go. Little by little, as the migration deepens, summer is taken away to where the seasons change almost imperceptibly.
There, it's kept in trust to be brought back next year.
Sometimes, the warmth is too heavy for the birds and butterflies. They drop bits of summer as they fly over, and those areas often see a milder winter than normal.
Perhaps winter will try to cover the wayward warmth with snow or ice, and bury the excess baggage until the next building blocks of summer are put in place and the cold melts away from above.
Maybe that's why some springs seem to break early and flowers appear before they're expected.
Some of summer's heat never left, it was just covered over, and its obsession with survival gives it the strength to put winter on the run before it's time.
Summer will gradually be restored when the birds bring the bits and pieces in their claws and the butterflies carry what they can on their backs.
When we see them leave, we know autumn and inevitable winter are near.
When they return, spring will have sprung and summer will loom on the horizon.
For the creatures that do not migrate, now is the time to pack away stores for the coming gloom.
We have several insect magnets growing around the house, including a tall variety of sedum.
Sedum, like many plants, comes in all sizes. There's the creeping kind that makes a decent rock wall hanging or a pretty filler where grass doesn't like to grow.
Then there is the two-foot-tall kind with huge heads of tiny flowers that gradually turn from green to purple. They're really good for dried arrangements.
The heads look a little like colored cauliflower. They get so big that the thick stems can't hold their weight and lay down. They don't break, however, they just seem tired.
That doesn't stop the buzzers, hummers and flitterers from descending en masse on the sedum.
I watched for a long time while small butterflies, wasps, bumble bees, honey bees and a few varieties of aviating insects I didn't recognize crawl all over the sedum.
There are many of the flower heads, some low to the ground and some still more or less upright.
The different species did not get in each other's way. They moved around as if they were choreographed. The fat bumble bees were careful not to land on a butterfly and the wasps — black ones, blue ones and yellow ones — avoided collisions and patiently found other places to feed and store the food.
A few yellow jackets ventured through from time to time, but they weren't looking for a seat in the sedum cafeteria. They're always searching for carrion or moisture and they kept to their own zig-zag courses.
Amid the bustle was courtesy.
Then along came a hornet. He wasn't interested in feeding, just bullying. He heckled and pummeled the diners mercilessly.
He'd knock a butterfly off its feet, bang into a bumble bee, harass a wasp and generally made a nuisance of himself.
He never tried to land. He just darted around, doling out equal shares of misery.
A blue wasp finally had enough. They're lithe creatures, and I've never had a violent encounter with one.
They flit hither and yon and never seem to bother anyone.
The hornet came by one time too many, and the wasp elevated itself like a helicopter and rammed the hornet from above.
The hornet was bigger, heavier and quicker than the wasp, but the wasp never let the hornet get above him.
A couple of whams was all it took. The hornet sped off to parts unknown.
The wasp then settled down on a vacant spot of sedum, and resumed feeding.
The harmonious humming and buzzing resumed, and a good time was had by all.
I wondered if I had witnessed a metaphor, if there was something of meaning in the drama that unfolded before me.
Naah. After all, they're just a bunch of bugs.
Larry Clark is a Record staff writer. Reach him at lclark@hickoryrecord.com.
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