Nature studies

My friend JQ shared a photo of a pretty stunning wasps’ nest—really, quite the engineering feat. Except that they built it right above the front door to her house:

(If you've never experienced multiple wasp stings that make you swell up like the Michelin Man, you can stop reading now. You won't care about this.)

This made me think about how our appreciation for, you know, nature is relative, depending upon whether you’re viewing it out in its, er, natural habitat or it’s assaulting your property.

The example I’m recalling involves woodpeckers.

I never saw a woodpecker on the, uh, hoof until I lived in Virginia. Really knocked me out the first time I saw one—stunningly beautiful, really—and I loved having them around in both Virginia and North Carolina.

They actually do make that machine-gun sound when they’re foraging for food in trees and other sources of wood; you know, the sound your average MRI machine makes. And it can be quite loud.

Well, I was at a friend’s house in Raleigh and we heard that rat-a-tat coming from behind us, and there was a pileated woodpecker going full bore on the eaves of my friend's house. He went ballistic—evidently woodpeckers can cause real damage. He was trying to shoo the bird away, yelling at it and stuff, but it was above the second story, so there wasn’t a chance.

I thought it was really funny; my friend, not so much. Which kind of made me think he was being a sourpuss.

Well, fast-forward a few years and move to my townhouse outside D.C. I was working in the kitchen when I heard that rat-a-tat…on the side of my house. I ran outside and sure enough—a pileated woodpecker was bashing away on my woodwork.

Let me reiterate—screaming at one of these things does not work. You have to hope that it doesn’t find your particular wood productive. Unless you can throw pebbles really accurately up three stories.

But that’s what I mean about appreciating nature being relative: critters lose their cuteness when it’s your property or children they’re chomping.