Wasp Season

by Jennifer Scoullar

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jennifer Scoullar has always possessed a great respect and passion for nature. She lives with her family on a small rural property in West Gippsland.

  http://jenniferscoullar.com/

  Published in Australia by Sid Harta Publishers Pty Ltd,

  ABN: 46 119 415 842

  23 Stirling Crescent, Glen Waverley, Victoria

  3150 Australia

  Telephone: +61 3 9560 9920, Facsimile: +61 3 9545 1742

  E-mail: author@sidharta.com.au

  First published in Australia 2006

  This edition published 2012

  Copyright © Jennifer Scoullar 2006

  Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design

  The right of Jennifer Scoullar to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of people living or dead are purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Scoullar, Jennifer

  Wasp Season

  ISBN: 978-1-921206-59-7 (Print)

  Digital edition published by

  Port Campbell Press

  www.portcampbellpress.com.au

  ISBN: 9781742981666 (ePub)

  Conversion by Winking Billy

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am grateful for the invaluable contributions of family and friends during the writing of this book. I particularly want to thank my daughter Heather, my son Daniel and my daughter-in-law Samantha for their suggestions and assistance. I thank my son Matthew for his great ideas and my younger children Tyson, Wayne, Daryl and Allan for their patience and understanding. I thank my dear friend Karen McKenzie for her encouragement.

  I am also deeply grateful to Claire Allan-Kamil for her critical judgement and insightful editing. Lastly, I am indebted to Robert Frost whose wonderful poem ‘A Considerable Speck’, provided the inspiration for the novel.

  DEDICATION

  To my parents, Doug and Al Scoullar.

  CHAPTER 1

  The fallen tree lay fifty metres from Beth’s house. A fertile, female, European wasp was on a search for a suitable nesting site. She was large, by wasp standards, measuring over thirty millimetres from nose to tail. Her striking yellow colouring and jet black bands made her easily distinguishable from most other insects. Long black antennae, placed high on her head, extended a full eight centimetres. Her iridescent wings folded lengthwise, like parts of a fan, when she was at rest. Behind her narrow waist, a smooth plump abdomen carried distinctive black ‘V’ shapes accompanied by dots on either side. At the tip of her abdomen was hidden a thin pointed drill; her sting. The painful sting of the European wasp did not contain barbs like those found on the sting of a Honeybee, therefore she could strike her victims repeatedly.

  She descended from a clear azure sky that spring morning in lazy spirals, to alight upon the fallen tree. A fierce autumn storm two years ago had toppled the shallow rooted Messmate. Its root system had surprisingly little depth into the poor mountain clay and so it fell with its giant root ball still attached. Several half-hearted attempts were made by Beth’s friends and family to cut up the timber for firewood. However it was a giant of a tree and its hardwood proved too much of a challenge for most chainsaws. Eventually Beth hired a local handyman. Proving unreliable he had yet to complete the task. Beth didn’t mind too much. She knew that fallen timber was an asset in the natural scheme of things, providing a rich habitat for scores of insects.

  She did not forsee that this could include European wasps.

  This founding queen selected her nest site most carefully. She investigated in detail every twig, fallen leaf, hollow and natural cavity. She remained faithful to the characteristics of her mother’s choice when she too had established her own nest in fallen timber the previous year. Of course, the foundress was not the first to discover this tree. Scorpions and spiders, crawling through the leaf litter, found the log and slipped under it. Centipedes wriggled into its cracks to prey on millipedes, insects and even other centipedes. They were fierce hunters whose victims were doomed once grasped in their poisonous fangs. Ground beetles and other hunters also explored the log looking for a meal. Huntsman spiders, with their flat bodies, lay hidden in tight places between the bark and the tree trunk. A soft green carpet of living lichens and mosses extended over the fallen Gum tree, trapping raindrops and dew. This in turn created moist havens for slugs and leeches. Water droplets gathered in the velvety green drapery and soaked through the bark, hastening the log’s inevitable decay.

  The exposed surface of the timber provided a canvas for a delicate golden filigree of great beauty. This was a yellow slime mould, weaving its way over the bark, consuming its host. Minute fungal filaments insinuated themselves into the timber, helping to spread the rot. A nest of tiny blind termites inhabited one end of the tree. Grubs and bush cockroaches tunneled into the hard wood, creating sawdust. This sawdust was carried underground by earthworms to enrich the soil. Tiny golden cocoons, in fantastic shapes and shades, hid in the damp, dark places. These delicate structures were cradles for the eggs of earthworms and leeches that were no bigger than orange pips.

  Other creatures also used the rotting log as a nursery. The future of each species depended on the safety of its eggs. Yet these same eggs also provided a rich source of protein for predators. Unguarded, they presented easy pickings. So each mother laid her eggs with great care to provide them with optimal hatching conditions. Lizards such as skinks, buried their pearl-like eggs in the rich humus. The composting material kept them at the right temperature until each hatchling emerged, independent from the start, to make its own way in the world. Wood-boring beetles tunnelled into the log to lay their eggs. They hatched into fat white grubs with bright orange heads, already surrounded by all the wood they could ever eat. However they were always in danger of becoming a meal for a predator such as a King Cricket.

  Some log dwellers actively protected their young. A Huntsman spider crouched over her flat white egg sac. Even after hatching, the spiderlings stayed close to their mother, who provided them with food and safety for several days. An earwig sat guarding more than fifty eggs, laid in batches in a natural crevice. She even cleaned them of fungus until their hatching in a few weeks time. Her babies would be tiny replicas of their mother, only paler and flightless. Their wings took four or more moults to develop. Incredibly, their earwig mother continued to diligently guard her young for weeks. After this time they scattered or faced the grim possibility of being eaten by their parents. A bush cockroach stayed close to her hard egg case, which was almost ready to split and release her nymphs. She reared them in an underground chamber, dutifully chewing wood into pulp with which to feed her babies. Nearby a mother centipede lay coiled protectively around her own pale brood.

  None of these creatures however, could equal the wasp queen when it came to maternal devotion. She stood at the apex of waspine development. Equipped with both instinct and learning ability, a European wasp queen single-handedly founds a marvelous and complex society. She cares for her young, and as adults they remain in the nest to assist in the care of the additional generations. Within the colony, division of labour develops. The young are protected during their miraculous metamorphosis from helpless blind grubs to highly developed adults. Possessing few natural predators in her adopted home, the foundress and her family presented
a ruthless and indomitable threat to the residents of the log and the surrounding bushland. At the end of summer, her nest might measure more than a foot in diameter and house many thousands of individuals. This glorious future depended on the queen choosing carefully and well during the coming months. A long and difficult road lay ahead of her.

  CHAPTER 2

  A European wasp landed on Beth’s kitchen windowsill. She stopped washing the dishes at the sink. Casually at first, she studied the insect. It was large and bright and boldly coloured. Striped like a tiger, its beauty both surprised and captivated her. On closer inspection, she could appreciate the exquisite delicacy of its body formation. It buzzed off the sill. Beth felt disappointed as it flew from view. True, the wasp was an imported pest, yet Beth considered its position with an open and fair mind. Yes, it was competing with native insect populations. Yes, it was a nuisance to picnickers and campers. However as with all introduced species, it was blameless; its presence was due to man’s interference in the natural order of things.

  As she gazed after the wasp, another came into view. This one carried something in its strong jaws. Beth recognised its prey instantly – a glorious Emperor Gum moth caterpillar. It struggled desperately, resplendent in its emerald-green coat and bright red standards. Beth caught her breath. As a child she vividly recalled the giant, ancient Peppercorn trees that loomed, protective and sacred, in the lane behind her suburban house. They stood firmly between the family’s weatherboard home and the noise of the train line. Showing an astonishing adaptation to the lack of Gum trees in the inner city, the Emperor Gum moths laid their eggs on the Peppercorn leaves and their caterpillars thrived. Beth was intrigued by them. She recalled the bench seats in the old tramcar in her backyard were cluttered with various jars containing sprigs of freshly picked Peppercorn leaves, laden with eggs and caterpillars at different stages of their life cycle. Nurturing these larvae and watching them cocoon, inspired in Beth a lifelong reverence for the natural world. Her love for these particular caterpillars was rooted in her most cherished childhood memories.

  As she watched in horror, the wasp lost its grip on its plump prize. With her heart in her mouth, Beth rushed outside to find the caterpillar on the path outside her kitchen window. She tried to gently pick it up. Rearing on its fleshy hind legs, the caterpillar brandished its mandibles to confront this new threat. She noticed that it was injured, where the wasp’s powerful jaws had attempted to crush its head. Cradling the damaged insect in her hand, Beth tenderly carried it to the edge of her garden, and placed it on the foliage of a young Ironbark tree. She felt comforted by the rescue. As she made her way back to the house she caught a fleeting glimpse of a European wasp hovering among the bright scarlet blossoms of a geranium in the garden. The sight caused her an unexpected chill. Although her charitable thoughts about innocently introduced species remained, the caterpillar incident hardened her heart a little. In an absentminded fashion she thought about wasp control measures. Perhaps she should get some sort of a trap? These vague thoughts soon took on a clear focus. She must eliminate the wasps.

  Returning inside, Beth slowly ascended the spiral staircase to her bedroom. She stopped to gaze from the window across to the forested mountainside beyond. Windows were great time wasters for Beth. Her large old home boasted many full-length picture windows. Heavy dusty pelmets shielded the tops of luxuriant drapes. The drapes were always pulled wide – except in the dead of winter when the house was like the den of some hibernating animal. Newly married and already pregnant, Beth and her wealthy, handsome husband Mark, had purchased their home with great hope and expectations, some thirteen years ago. For a period they experienced a secure and loving marriage, punctuated by the birth of Sarah and then Rick three years later. Apart from the pressure applied by her pretentious and hard to please mother-in-law, Vanessa, Beth had little to complain about. Her secluded mountain hideaway provided her with the peaceful lifestyle she’d always dreamed of, and the space to indulge her love of horses. Motherhood came as an unexpected but blinding joy, utterly captivating and fulfilling her. Mark, on the other hand, experienced little of the satisfaction felt by his wife. Long commutes to his city accounting practice and an ever increasing workload reduced the amount of time he was able to spend with his young family. His mother, Vanessa, had instilled in him from childhood a fierce competitiveness and driving ambition that was constantly fuelled by the cutthroat rivalry among the Partners at his firm. Beth regarded his increasingly frantic climb up the career ladder with dismay. Inevitably they grew apart and had finally separated several years ago. However Beth was on the whole a remarkably calm and self-contained woman. She’d coped well with finding herself single again at thirty-eight.

  Beth pulled on a clean jumper, tugged briefly with a comb at her short red hair and headed back downstairs. As usual, she went out the back door, tired of dodging the honey bees that swarmed busily over the climbing roses festooning the brickwork at the front of the house. Full of purpose, she drove into town to visit the local hardware store in search of wasp traps. There were lots.

  They all worked on roughly the same principle – a chamber to fill with some sort of bait and an entrance which would not be an obvious escape route for the insects once inside. Baits could be either sweet or savoury. Sugar, honey or jam in a little water worked. Wine or orange juice left to ferment was also good. Alternatively, dog food out of a can was perfectly suitable. Beth made her choice and drove straight home. When in town, she usually stopped to do some shopping or have a coffee at the corner cafe. Not today. She felt oddly single-minded.

  Back at home she considered possible baits, and settled on honey-water. She hung the trap on the Lasiandra tree, right outside the kitchen window. Then she returned inside. As she waited and watched she let her thoughts wander. The season was unusually dry and the family relied on tank water. At times they bucketed bath water onto the garden and into the animal troughs. She’d done so this very morning. As usual, the water troughs were a gathering-place for a throng of shining damsel and dragonflies, darting to and fro on rainbow wings. But this morning, these aerial acrobats were joined by the odd tiger striped wasp, gingerly drinking at the brackish water. Their presence deepened her sense of unease.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, she resumed washing the dishes with one eye on her new trap. There was not a wasp in sight. She felt a pang of disappointment. The ringing phone startled her. It was Mark, who now lived in a fashionable inner eastern suburb with his new girlfriend and baby – a ninety-minute drive away from Beth’s bushland retreat. Despite the couple’s lengthy separation, for some reason neither one of them had yet sought a divorce. They’d developed an amicable working relationship revolving around their children – Sarah who was now twelve and Rick who was ten years of age. Mark was to pick the kids up that evening for a regular weekend access visit. He was always completely reliable in this regard. Beth agreed to have them ready by five o’clock. Rick would not be happy, thought Beth. Lately he seemed to attend these weekends at his Dad’s house with greater and greater reluctance. When she questioned him about it, Rick just muttered something about his Dad having ‘lost the plot’. What on earth did that mean? Sarah though, would be as delighted as ever. She had always been Daddy’s little girl. Her new baby brother, Chance, was still a novelty and his mother, Helen, tended to spoil Sarah. Helen was Mark’s secretary in his accountancy practice before the separation. Beth suspected that Helen’s relationship with Mark overlapped her own at some point. The girl was pretty, blonde and at twenty-five was younger than Mark by more than a decade. Beth found it hard to take her seriously. Still, she was grateful that Helen always made her kids feel welcome. Apart from that, the younger woman occupied very few of Beth’s thoughts.

  Beth busied herself packing the children’s things. It was the start of a long weekend and she did not expect them home until Monday evening. Every time she passed through the kitchen she invariably stopped to look at the trap. Still no wasps. When the kids tu
mbled in the front door after school, she had their bags all ready. Sarah was a sweet, intelligent girl who always tried her best to maintain the peace within her divided family. She had red hair like her mother, which she wore in a short bob. Her eyes too were like Beth’s; serious, green eyes that observed the world from beneath her straight fringe. Beth watched Sarah’s valiant attempts to keep everybody happy with a mixture of genuine admiration and gentle amusement. The only person Sarah had little patience for was her brother, Rick. Rick was small for his ten years with blonde curly hair and melting brown eyes like his father. He was an emotional and highly imaginative boy, who was inclined to get himself into trouble by speaking his mind, regardless of the appropriate time or place. Thus he remained a source of constant embarrassment to his polite sister. Ever hungry, Rick made a sandwich and noticed the gleaming clear Perspex orb hanging in the garden. Initially he was intrigued by the idea of the trap and watched it for several minutes. However no wasps quickly led to no interest. Not so with Beth. She wanted to observe the first contact and continued to gaze at the trap long after Mark picked up the kids. Only fading light drove her from the window for a quick meal of leftover pizza. By nine o’clock, she retired for the night with a glass of wine and a good book.

  Beth rose early the next morning. She worked part-time as a riding instructor at a local equestrian school. She enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the Academy. Today she took a group of three young riders and worked with them on their own horses. They were a talented bunch and it pleased Beth to watch them slowly but surely establish that elusive bond that develops, with time, between rider and mount. After the lesson, dusty, tired and happy, Beth headed for home. She intended to go for a ride herself that afternoon. The long weekend stretched invitingly before her.