Me and My Mud Dauber

            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.