No Jackets Required (or Welcome) At This Dining Table
By: Bill Ervolino
Columnist
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... To quote the brilliant and, unfortunately deceased Prince: "Dig, if you will, the picture ..."
..... You
may want to close your eyes for this.
..... Yes, both of them.
.....
OK, now, clear your mind and imagine me sitting at the dining table on my handsomely appointed patio. It's mid-august and I;m gnawing, passionately, through some deliciously saucy and savory baby back ribs.
.....
You might say I am in Pig Heaven - a phase sued to describe both a state of gustatory bliss and the likely new home for the porker whose ribs I an contentedly chewing on.
.....
Now dig, if you will, the sound of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" playing loudly, as a swarm of yellow jackets descends from the sky and swirl around my face before making beeline - literally - for my ribs.
..... STOP!!
..... I scream, I swat, I pick up a long scary knife and sue it to slice through the air like a samurai.
..... Vertebrally, I grab whatever I can hood from the table and dash back into my house with it.
..... I'M disappointed, of course, I had hoped to eat in the Great Outdoors, with the flowers and the trees. And the birds and no bees.
..... But ... no such luck.
..... As for they yellow jackets, they eventually dash back to their nest, too, with the few things I left behind: some cornbread crumbs, a sauce-stained napkin and a half bottle of Corona.
..... Their queen is furious, of course: :I wanted ribs!"
...... And it's all so unnecessary.
..... My dog know that if they lie quietly near the table while Daddy is eating, and don't bother me, then they will each get a little something.
.....
My yellow jackets, however, don't seem to get the message.
..... Ditto for all those other yellow jackets. I encounter, hanging around farms hat sell pumpkins and cider.
.....
Yellow jackets LOVE cider. Especially if you put a little vodka in it.
..... They love sweet drinks. and they love carrion a polite phase for dead animals.
.....
I wasn't around many yellow jackets growing up in queen. But years later, when my family moved to Long Island and I worked ever so briefly -between high school and college - at a McDonald's my eyes were opened.
.....
At around 3 PM. every day, to make room for the night shift's garbage, my manager would instruct me to go out back and jump up and down in the yellow jacket-infested Dumpster, tamping down mountains of discarded sweet drink cups and carrion bits.
..... (And potatoes? Nah. the fries too good. No one threw them away.)
..... After four months of being chased around the parking lot by these things, I got on with my life and began college in 1973 - the same year that Paul Newman and Robert Redford starred in "the Sting."
..... Coincidence?
..... The reason yellow jackets are so active in the fall is that they need to bring as much protein and sugar back to their nests as possible so that the queen can shot down the old colonies and deposit eggs into the new ones.
.....
And the yellow jackets who are running around doing all the work? they die after their autumn task are completed. I've tried explaining this to them, but they pay no attention.
..... ME: "You're doing all this work and getting nothing in return! She's using you! She going to take all this nourishment form you and then hibernate in a secure location!"
..... THEM: "Bzzz ..."
..... ME: "then you are going to die. D-I-E. And she is going to winter in a tree or under some bark, and come back in the spring, with all new workers! You idiots!"
..... THEM: "Bzzz ..."
..... I recently asked an exterminate if yellow jackets serve any purpose to humanity and was told that the buggers do, indeed, control the populations of other agricultural pests. Adm they pollinate flowers.
...... My next question: Are they edible?
..... Interestingly, enough, some people do eat yellow jackets. In Japan, they're considered a source of protein. I'm told tat raccoons and skunks also like eating them
..... So they must tacit good, right?
..... And they really do stick to your ribs.