Aspen tree
6:40am. Before sunrise. Warm front coming in.
Two wasps turn up crinkled aspen leaves like ICE agents investigating dishwashers of a Mexican restaurant. I watch below the tree. Unlike most mornings I’m out here, the sun is not yet out. The aspen is still a pale silhouette in the morning sky. It’s cloudy. Low, blue stratus.
I listen to their little wings furiously beating. One goes to the cup of a leaf, its edge all brown, crinkly, decomposing. The other lands on a leaf occupied by an ant. The ant is trampolined off when the wasp lands, and disappears into the gravel below.
The two wasps are scavenging leaf detritus. Eating breakfast. Or dinner. Or snack. I do not know what time they go to sleep. Do wasps sleep?
No, they don’t. They just chill hard for a few hours. “Wasps usually do not strike at night,” one pest control agency says.
