Game of Wasps

Since all birds are direct descendants of the dinosaurs that survived the great extinction, I call our hummingbirds my tiny shiny diny-saurs. Of course they’re not actually my birds. They just like to visit the feeders I put up near our living room windows. Sometimes there are dozens of them, vrooming around so loudly I used to think fighter jets were flying above my house.

Recently, a single yellowjacket wasp staged a hostile takeover of one feeder. He managed to scare away almost all the hummingbirds, except for a few who were exceptionally brave, hungry, or uninformed. Watch him occupying his ill-gotten territory:

At first I thought it was kind of ridiculous that dozens of birds gave so much ground to one single wasp. Then I realized that comparatively, the wasp is as big to the hummingbirds as a pit bull would be to me. Plus it can fly. And stab things. Also, it’s poisonous.

Okay, shinies. I get it.

It makes perfect sense to avoid poisonous things, even little ones. Black widow spiders, baby rattlesnakes (the babies are more venomous than the adults), death cap mushrooms. Even duckbilled platypuses, which are the only venomous mammals, and can jab you with heel spurs that contain a neurotoxin so painful not even morphine can even take the edge off it.

I suppose you could play around with these things, if you were a bit soft on logic. I intend to go my whole life without touching any of them.

However, there are other poisonous things I haven’t always avoided. Gossip, for example. Self-loathing. Passing judgment. The company of narcissists or sociopaths. These things are all highly toxic, but I’ve not only touched them, I’ve positively wallowed in them. Because I’m a bit soft on logic.

I say this without any shame. I’ve given up shame, because I realized it’s poisonous. I don’t mean healthy guilt, or the shyness that keeps me from, say, peeing in parking lots. I mean the gut-deep belief that there’s something basically, horrifically, inalterably wrong with me. This feeling weakens and cripples me, and once the toxin is in my system, it starts leaking out and poisoning other people. It also draws toxic people, who know a weak target when they see one.

I’ve decided to follow the hummingbirds’ example. For the last few weeks, whenever I’ve seen, felt, thought, or heard anything that seems toxic, I’ve detoured around it. When I catch sight of myself in a mirror and rear up to begin my usual storm of criticism, I stop and steer around it by reminding myself that I’d never attack anyone else’s body the way I attack my own. When someone starts bashing another person who’s not in the room, I counter by saying something forgiving or appreciative. When a certain narcissistic presidential candidate appears on my TV screen, I change the channel.

There are times when I’ve missed the special zing that only hostility can bring, but overall, my life feels much, much healthier. In the meantime, the wasp got eaten by a scrub jay, and the hummingbirds are back at the feeders, unmolested. I kind of knew all along they were going to win.