Posse time

Because I live in South Central Texas, I have read many books about the Indian Wars that took place here shortly before, during, and after the Civil War. I've read how the settlers would farm their lands with a plow and a shotgun. How their young boys would be swooped up on the back of a Comanche pony, not to return for years, if ever. It's great fodder for the imagination because we live near a creek and have found lots of evidence of Indian life here (arrowheads, spearheads, hollowed out stones, etc).

But yesterday I got a true understanding of what it is like to need to be armed on your own land.

I was planting flowers in a bed near the house and sweet girl was running up to me with my little spade when a giant red wasp swooped out of nowhere and stung her arm. It was about an inch long and hanging on ferociously--I had to swat at it to get it off her arm while she screamed with pain.

There is nothing like seeing your child hurt to make you declare war. I marched into the garage right to our large stash of wasp spray. Feeling like Marshall Dillon, I took one can for each hand. I shook them to see that they were locked and loaded. And I went out hunting for the enemy.

I killed more wasps in that next 20 minutes than I have all summer. Each dead one made me feel a little better about the little girl with an ice pack on her arm. The only good wasp is a dead wasp.

This morning I made the connection to the early German farmers and the way they had to plow, always on the lookout for that telltale sign of an Indian raider. Yep, I watered my flowers this morning with the hose in one hand, and the can in another. I listened intently for a buzz. I checked for sleeping enemies under the eaves. I almost shot a hummingbird! That would have been a tragic friendly fire incident, but it buzzed away safely.

And the whole time, Willie Nelson's "Beer for my Horses" was going through my head. I wanted to meet back at the local saloon, in one piece, after stringing a few more bad guys up.

Really, this is not the way I want to garden. Furtively darting around corners, wasp spray in hand, checking, then moving on? It's a combination Green beret/SWAT team tactic, all rolled into the "frightened of farming" mode of my predecessors. I do wonder, when I bend down to pull up a weed, if THAT is the time the enemy will attack. And on some level, I suppose I will deserve it, for having taken out so many of the troops.

Meanwhile, sweet girl is fine. 25 more wasps are dead. And I'm still terrified of my own backyard.