The corner of North 1st and Gish in San Jose is dangerous. Recently, the city has placed crossing guards at the corners before and after school to help the Bachrodt Elementary School students travel safety. At this dangerous intersection, there is traffic, Light Rail trains, and, now, a wasp nest.
Some people are deadly allergic to stings from such creatures, and I thought it unsafe to have potentially violent insects along the sidewalk where children commute to school. I thought about calling someone to remove the hazard before it got any bigger, but whom would I call? I thought about smashing the hive with my shoe, killing the queen, and then running like Usain Bolt, but I'm not Jamaican.
Who am I to destroy this young monarch's fledgling kingdom?
I remember last year, there was a spider whose web spanned between two columns. The web must have been 5 feet across. And the spider, with a large web, had an equally large body. The spider hovered in the night like a ghost. I know it was looking down, but that giant backside of the spider looked like a face, laughing at me and taunting me just before it attacked.
I couldn't help myself. I took a branch and tore the spider's webbing from the columns. The spider fell the ground collapsing into a ball with tentacles frantically trying to upright itself. The once ominous and terrifying spider was not ominous or terrifying at all—it was simply a creature trying to make a home. Its masterpiece web, which must have taken days to complete, was destroyed in an instant by an insecure child.
Reader, I am at an impasse. The wasp nest can potentially hurt children, but how can I destroy something so extraordinary?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
~Robert Frost
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