A wasp saved my life today.
It happened when I was climbing a tree. I enjoy a nice tree climb. I enjoy the euphoria that comes from the possibility of a painful plummet, smacking tree branch after tree branch until the ground sharply reduces my speed from sixty to broken back in zero seconds flat. And like most boys, I can’t just climb to the first branch: that wouldn’t be fun. I have to climb to a height where the branches aren’t much bigger than my index finger and their load bearing capability is questionable.
I shimmied up ten feet of the trunk before I could reach the first safe branch that the tall lanky fella had to offer. I continued up another twenty feet, until I was standing on a solid limb, with a nice trunk to rest against and a branch above my head to hold onto for stability. I stood there, satisfied, at the height I was at and watched the neighborhood boys play futbol in the field across the street from us at Kedesh. However, it wasn’t long before I looked up and realized that the branch I was holding was “plenty” thick enough to hold my weight. I contemplated deeply for a solid half second before making a calculated decision.
I put my hands in place and braced my bare foot against its hold for my boost up. Just as I began to push off, something fell from above and smacked me right in the nose! It was big enough to make me stop moving and wonder what it was. Come to find out, nothing fell from above. What had hit me on the nose was a wasp!
This guy was red-orange in colour and looked as long as my pinky! Rupert (that’s what I named him—don’t ask me why) hit me on the nose and then just started to fly around in front of me looking like a drunkard knocking things over as he makes his way out of a bar on Saturday night. Rupert’s bumbling, for whatever reason, made me look up into the area I was about to climb. I guess I thought there might be more drunk wasps leaving the tree bar, and I didn’t want to be that object they hit anymore.
I didn’t find the wasp bar, and I didn’t see any more wasps. What I did see however, was a two foot snake green in colour with yellow spots, curled around the branch that I was ready to jump to thirty seconds prior. It might have been the most poisonous snake in the world, but I’m no expert.
He wasn’t curled up ready to strike or anything cool like that. To be honest, he didn’t seem impressed that I was up in the tree at all, and I think in an attempt to mock me, Franklin, (that’s his name) began to slowly glide higher into the tree as if saying look at me, I can go higher than you, on skinnier branches than you, Na, Na Na, Boo, Boo! That’s how it happened in my head, at least. All that being said, at this point I was happy that Rupert the drunken wasp flew at my face without stinging me. If nothing else, it made me take a second look at the spot I wanted to go next, and saved me from a snake bite.
About this time Franklin disappeared into the canopy above me, and I wasn’t too fond of his disappearing act, especially after he just mocked my height in the tree. Also, he was a snake and I didn’t want him to dive bomb me and bite my neck with his probably poisonous fangs because I climbed his tree.
While looking for Franklin and having thoughts of climbing down I noticed Rupert flying in front of my face again. Come to find out Rupert was headed not from a bar, but to one! A baseball-sized comb with what my mind saw as one hundred Rupert replicas dangled just four feet above my head, in a spot I would’ve surely headed like a soccer ball if I made that last climb to the higher branch.
I don’t know if you’ve seen those shows where two people sit at a bar and a beer gets spilled. Usually a big barrel chested biker type, clothed in leather and tattoos, has his beer spilled on him by the elbow of some scrawny nerd type seated next to him. What always proceeds is a beating of great proportion by said barrel chest and the two cannons called arms attached. Guess who I would’ve been in this situation? I would’ve been the scrawny nerd climbing the tree knocking over all the beer onto all the barrel chested Ruperts in this bar! There would have been a hundred knock out stings to the face as I didn’t run, but fell away from them down the tree, hitting branch after branch, hoping the fall would break my neck so I wouldn’t have to feel the hundred more stings coming my way, although deservedly so for spilling all those wasps’ beer. I mean, that’s just rude.
Luckily for me, I had a savior from all this pain today. His name was Rupert. He saved me from wicked death, although it would’ve been a pretty cool death story later in life for the rest of the racers: “Jason was climbing high up in a tree when he hit a wasp nest with his head and grabbed a snake instead of a tree branch, and then the snake bit him and a hundred wasps stung him as he fell flipping and spinning to a perfect 10 landing. Unfortunately, Jason wasn’t a cat, so naturally that perfect landing happened on his head, not his feet.”
Fortunately for me though, I have a Creator that can speak to creatures like Rupert and tell them to intercede on His behalf, so we don’t climb into situations that could kill us, because Lord knows we humans like pushing dumb limits for no reason other than, “Cuz I wanna.”
