The Mason-Wasps

by Jean-Henri Fabre

The Common Wasp has chanced to set up her dwelling in the enclosure. The establishment is beside one of the walks. No member of the household dares venture in that part; it would be dangerous to go near it. We must rid ourselves of these bad neighbours, who terrify the children. It will also be a good thing to profit by this excellent [[250]]opportunity of experimenting with appliances which could not be used in the open fields, where the little country bumpkins would soon smash my glass to bits.

All that is required is a large chemist’s bell-glass. At night, when all is dark and the Wasps have gone home, I place it over the entrance of the burrow, after first flattening the soil. To-morrow, when the Wasps resume their labours and find themselves checked in their flight, will they succeed in contriving a passage under the rim of the bell-glass? Will these sturdy workers, who are capable of digging a spacious cavern, realize that a very short subterranean tunnel will set them free? That is the question.

To-morrow arrives. The bright sunlight falls upon the glass container. The workers ascend in a crowd from under ground, eager to go in search of provisions. They butt against the transparent wall, tumble down, pick themselves up again and whirl round and round in a crazy swarm. Some, weary of dancing this continual saraband, alight on the ground, wander peevishly at random and then reenter their dwelling. Others take their places as the sun grows hotter. Well, not one of them, note this, [[251]]not one of them scratches with her feet at the base of the treacherous circle. This means of escape is too far above their mental capacity.

A few Wasps have spent the night out of doors. Here they are, coming in from the fields. Round and round the bell-glass they fly; at last, after much hesitation, one of them decides to dig under the edge of the enclosing wall. Others are quick to follow her lead. A passage is opened without difficulty. The Wasps go in. I do not interfere with them. When all the loiterers have reentered the nest, I close the breach with some earth. The narrow opening, if seen from within, might help the Wasps to escape; and I wish to leave the prisoners the honour of inventing the liberating tunnel.

However poor the Wasp may be in judicious inspirations, escape has now become probable. Benefiting by their recent experience, the loiterers who have just entered will, I thought, set the others an example; they will teach them the tactics of digging at the base of the rampart.

I judged my diggers too hastily. Of example set and taken, of learning by experience, there is not a sign. Inside the bell-glass not an attempt is made to employ the [[252]]method which succeeded so well in the case of the home-comers. The insect population whirls round and round in the torrid atmosphere of the glass, but indulges in no enterprise. It flounders about, decimated from day to day by famine and the excessive heat. At the end of a week, not a creature is left alive. A heap of corpses covers the ground. Incapable of any innovation in its customs, the city has perished.

This inept behaviour reminds me of the story of the wild Turkeys as told by Audubon.[2] A bait consisting of a few grains of millet lures them into a short underground passage, which leads to the centre of a wattled cage. When fed to repletion, the flock is ready to depart; but to use for their departure the way by which they entered, though it still yawns in the centre of the enclosure, is a manœuvre of too high an order for the stupid Turkeys. This path is dark, whereas daylight shines between the bars. The birds therefore revolve indefinitely against the trelliswork, until the trapper arrives and wrings their necks.

An ingenious Fly-trap is employed in our [[253]]homes. It consists of a water-bottle with an opening at the bottom and standing on three low supports. Inside, some soap-suds form a ring-shaped lake around the orifice. A lump of sugar, placed beneath the entrance, acts as the bait. The Flies make for the sugar. On leaving it, seeing the light above them, they rise with a vertical flight and enter the trap, where they wear themselves out, beating their wings against the transparent wall. All perish by drowning, because they are incapable of the rudimentary notion of going out by the way they came.

Even so with the Wasps under my bell-glass: they know how to get in, but do not know how to get out. On ascending from their burrow, they go to the light. Finding broad daylight in their transparent prison, they consider their aim accomplished. An obstacle checks their flight, it is true; no matter: the whole area is brightly lit up; and this is enough to delude the prisoners, who, despite the continual warning of their collisions with the glass, endeavour, obstinately and without attempting anything else, to fly farther in the direction of the luminous void.

The Wasps returning from the fields are in a different situation. They are passing [[254]]from light to darkness. Moreover, even without the intervention of the experimenter’s wiles, they are sure occasionally to find the threshold of their dwelling obstructed by fallen earth, the result of rain or of the feet of the passers-by. The next action of the homing Wasps is bound to follow: they search about, sweep, dig and end by finding the entrance-tunnel. This power of scenting their house through the soil and this eagerness to clear the doorway of their dwelling are innate aptitudes: they form part of the resources bestowed upon the species for its preservation in the midst of daily accidents. Here there is no need of reflection or calculation: the earthy obstacle has been familiar to one and all since Wasps first came into the world. They therefore scrape and go in.