Are Murder Hornets an Omen?, May 7, 2020

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My brother, Gerry, and I were fishing off a small country bridge in northwest Connecticut circa 1969. He was around 8; I was around 6.

As we stood side by side, bouncing freshly exhumed earthworms onto the noses of insensible trout below, a distinctive hum caught our attention.

A family of hornets had made its home in the very pipe we were leaning against, and Gerry did what any healthy, red-blooded American boy naturally would: He dared his freckle-faced irritant of a brother to stick his hand in the pipe’s opening.

A dare’s a dare, so that’s precisely what I did, thus launching a lifelong obsession with flying things that sting. (Did you know a hornets nest can function while wrapped around a small human fist? I didn't.)

I made peace with bees in time — amazing little guys — but never with wasps and hornets. Not since that day. Not ever.

A couple of summers ago, bald-faced hornets nested in a magnolia bush outside my kitchen door. After blasting them with two cans of RAID from below, I ripped the nest from the bush, doused it with gasoline and burned it on my driveway. Then I ran over what was left of it with my car — a half dozen times  — while my wife and daughters watched incredulously from our porch. 

I consider that normal behavior; that’s how much I hate them.

So when I learned along with other Americans this week about so-called Murder Hornets  — aka Vespa Mandarinia — that have arrived here from China, the internal battle stations siren went off and an untoward but irresistible thought emerged: What is it with China? 

It seems there’s something new and terrible arriving from the Middle Kingdom and its environs every couple of years along with all those Target and Walmart boxes — the Marmorated Stink Bug (P.U.), Longhorn Beetle (tree killer), Citrus Psyllid (destroys orange groves), Tiger Mosquito (Zika, West Nile), Emerald Ash Borer (remember ash Lousville Sluggers?), the Northern Snakehead and Asian Carp (goodbye lake fishing), and now, worst of all, COVID-19. 

It tempts the question, does China have it out for us somehow? Are our nations on a collision course?

Foreign policy hawks have long advanced that narrative — for good reason. But it’s highly unlikely coronavirus and a hornet from Hades have anything to do with it. Communist China’s growing air force and navy, that’s the buzzing hive demanding attention.

But still these invasive species feel strangely omen-like, like a warning of dire things to come. One hopes these thoughts are foolishness. No clash is inevitable, right?

One of the smartest men ever to live bequeathed us powerful advice: “Look deep into nature,” Albert Einstein said, “then you will understand everything better.” In other words, tiny observations can reveal major universal truths.

Which brings me back to that darn hornets nest in the pipe.

I suppose it’s possible — just possible — that we could have found a way to coexist all those years ago. Perhaps I could have pocketed my fist; maybe they could have chosen another pipe to call home, one not above an obvious fishing hole.

And yet the hunter in me aches to return to that bridge right now and finish off those hornet’s progeny, not to mention their newly arrived cousins from Asia.

What would Einstein make of that?

Nature's instructions are adamant, and it can take supernatural will to check them, especially when one feels threatened, as we do today from China and China does with us. Both nations will need strength to resist powerful survival instincts in the times that may be coming.

Without it, both could be badly stung.

Ask Gerry.

William F. B. O’Reilly is a consultant to Republicans.