A Visitor at My Door

A single yellow jacket died and nose-dived into a pucker of my deck doormat.

All summer long, hundreds (if not thousands) of yellow jackets nested in holes in the ground and wood planks and under rocks all along Lake Cheston's shore. At the dam, I knew every nesting site and simply avoided stepping into or stabbing my walking pole into one. The yellow jackets didn't bother me because I respected their space and they respected mine.

I confess to a peculiar summer pleasure: I enjoyed standing just above one or more of their nests in morning. When the air warmed and sun shone, they burst out like shooting stars, rat-a-tat, so fast and so many they made a yellow stream pouring out of darkness into light.

I found this fellow in mid-afternoon. By morning, it was gone, perhaps providing someone's meal or snack overnight. I missed him when I opened the door: he reminded me of so many happy days at the lake, and of the summer now -- like him -- gone.