dauber

Fitch Long drove down his driveway and parked beside the mower shed. He was dog tired. His cotton work shirt clung to his back and shoulders, soaked through with sweat, and the tips of his brown work boots dragged slightly in the gravel as he made his way to the shed. It was mid summer and the grass was growing slower now, but weeds were gaining purchase in the lawn and needed cutting. Squinting slightly as he looked through the treetops, he figured there was just enough time to get the job done before dark.

Fitch entered the shed and looked over his right shoulder to a corner always coated in thick webs. Usually there would be a large wolf spider perched just outside it’s funneled hole watching for an errant victim. He had witnessed all manner of carnage in these webs. The webs ensnared everything, including luna moths and young lizards. This day to his surprise he spied a dirt dauber pretending to be caught in the web. Often dirt daubers feign injury or entanglement in an attempt to lure spiders out in the open so they might administer a paralytic sting. The sting renders the spider helpless. Then the wasp neatly packs it's victim into it’s muddy nest where it will remain asleep until the young wasps emerge to eat it.

Instead of a wolf spider Fitch’s eye caught a rather large black widow poised for attack. Since black widows usually lurk under things, he was curious to find one on the ceiling. She was facing away from him, and the rear of the spiders shiny black abdomen was most of what Fitch could see. She was frozen, watching the sapphire colored wasp as if to be sizing it up. Her forelegs were raised, joints bent slightly. “Oh shit” muttered Fitch, mouth agape, lingering for a few minutes to see if the spider would spring and a fight would ensue. But nothing happened. Eventually he guessed he might be causing a distraction. So he decided to leave, cut the grass and check on them when he returned.

It was July, and the cicadas would be singing soon. Fitch always looked forward to hearing their first calls and discovering the remaining empty husks of their pupae clinging to the bark of the maples in his yard. Old folks used to call the empty insect husks “dry flies”. When his daughter was young they would gather the husks and arrange them on the windowsill above the kitchen sink in rumba lines or in some kind of mock circus tumbling act. One year he heard a lone cicada singing a week before any others and wondered how that could occur. What a waste, what a sad, lonely song when sung alone.

After cutting the grass Fitch eased the mower back into the shed, dismounted, and stepped back to view the result of the webbed confrontation. The spider had not moved. She was still in the same spot and in the same position. The wasp was barely moving now, just a slight leg twitch was all he saw as it dangled from a wad of tangled web. It was then Fitch realized the wasp was not playing a game at all, but had already been struck and lost when he had gazed on them earlier.

The spider's victory was an affront to Fitch’s sense of justice. He had an affinity for dirt daubers since his childhood. He always considered them brave, industrious and friendly insects, occasionally lighting on you or flying right up to your face and hovering as if to be looking knowingly into your eyes. Daubers are never aggressive. Fitch had never heard of anyone being stung by one. And like the cicada’s they sing, but only while constructing their mud nests. It is a loud whirring buzz amplified by the hollow tube of the nest. He always thought it akin to them intently whistling while they worked.

Fitch searched the floor now, picking up an ever present machete. He extended it to the corner and picked the spider from her web. She clung to the blade aggressively as he let it fall to the concrete below, tapping the back tip of the blade until she was deposited and scrambling across the dusty floor. He laid the flat side of the blade on her and crushed her, dragging the cold metal intently until she was just a gelatinous smear on the rough gray surface beneath. He then reached up with the blade and pulled the dauber from the web. It was most definitely dead, there was no indication of remaining life. Fitch gently wiped the wasp on the tread of the mower tire, so it could fall to the floor. Then he stepped on it to quell any suffering that might remain.