To the left
of my front door and clear up in the top corner where brick meets eaves lives a
black mud dauber wasp. For the past few
weeks, I have noted her daily progress adding more cones to the single one she
emerged from earlier this spring.
Diligently, she daubs—or whatever that is called, making a nest. She has not once bothered me.
So today,
when I returned home after babysitting the grandkids for a bit, I was sad to
see that her nest had been knocked down.
Likely, it was not the wind but a well-meaning gesture by my son-in-law
when he went in to deliver my share of the Bountiful Basket we purchase every
other week. I have never been
particularly fond of wasps, especially since the long-ago day on my
grandparents’ farm when I was stung by one.
But I also have never developed a friendly co-existence with a wasp
before.
My mud
dauber, oblivious to my compassion for her, was perched in her usual upside-down
position working on the remaining single cone of the nest. Unperturbed, she was at the usual task of
making mud. It is a fine place for a
wasp to live, there in the corner by my door, because of the smallish spiders
that spin their lines to trap little bugs but become prey for the wasp instead. Since I prefer wasps to spiders, she provides
a helpful service keeping the front-door spider population down.
Perhaps I should
not be surprised at this affinity with a well-behaved wasp since I am of Wasp heritage
myself. However, neither of us is
waspish in the least.
