
A wrathful hornet took revenge upon the gardener who had destroyed its swarm's low hanging nest in the Dove Tree, a canopy of heart shaped leaves and nuts resembling large green olives. The gardener had come back the following day to find the tenacious swarm attempting to recolonize branches of the tree near the spot of the previous day's devastation, so the gardener took up arms, loppers and hose, and cut higher into the tree while drenching the insects to discourage rebuilding, or at least cause them to build a nest high enough so that no garden visitor might casually ramble into a cornupcopia of angery stings.
I heard him holler and, in pain, drop his implements, and when 2 little girls came along soon after, strolling under the locus of the hornet's ambition, I shooed them away, scaring them with too much neurosis. It seems to run in the family, given that two young members of my swarm came to colonize my bed last night, each having dreamed about stinging insects.












































