The Imp at War. Part 1. The Lilac

Wilderness ... real primeval wilderness ... is seductive and dangerous, even malevolent. Mountains offer cliff-top vistas with unsure footing, glaciers provide a glimpse of the frozen wastes of the ice age and snow-hidden crevasses, forests and jungles invite exploration and the opportunity to perish in endless loops and spirals of sameness. Disease, hypothermia, drowning, animal attack, starvation, thirst, heat, madness and death. In earlier days, those who re-emerged from the primeval wilderness were hailed as heroes, but they often returned with scarred bodies or minds. Man against Nature--it's the stuff of history, great literature and mediocre art.

Left: Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett and company in the Amazon encountering a giant anaconda. Fawcett and his son disappeared in the Amazon in 1925. Center: Sir Douglas Mawson (10 Nov. 1912) looking down into an antarctic glacial crevasse that has just swallowed one of his two companions, Lt. Belgrave Ninnis, and many of their dogs and most of their supplies. His other companion, Xavier Mertz, died on 8 Jan. 1913 from an unknown ailment, perhaps brought on by the consumption of too much dog liver. Right: Meriwether Lewis being chased by a grizzly bear during his famous expedition with William Clark (1805-1806). The expedition was success (for some people), but Lewis died in 1809 from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Eastern North America had its wilderness, but it's pretty much gone ... cut down, plowed under, paved over, built up. One must be unlucky, stupid or some unhappy cocktail of both to have a life-changing "wilderness adventure" in central Maryland. Still, a part of the old malevolence remains, although in a shrunken, dark and twisted form ... a sort of vindictive raisin. It no longer wields the heavy weapons but is skilled with the slings and arrows at its disposal. In fact, its arsenal is continually enriched by humanity's inept introductions of new bugs, vermin, weeds and disease from virtually every continent. While the modern ammunition seems puny in comparison to the original, it is remarkably varied ... the tools of unpredictable sneak attacks. The aim of this vestigial Imp of the Wilderness is not to maim or kill but to drive humans crazy, disrupt domestic tranquility and empty wallets. The Imp's reward is unclear. A successful skirmish seems paltry revenge for humanity's crimes, but success of a well-constructed vindictive plan may offer some reward.

Folks who venture into "the country" a couple times a year rarely experience the full brunt of The Imp and may be forgiven for harboring warm and fuzzy feelings about Nature and the rural experience. After all, little mishaps and inconveniences are expected when one is "roughing it." I was once like them ... clueless.  But after setting up house in The Imp's domain and witnessing its methods often and up close, I have come to a different and more nuanced view. I'm certain, for example, that The Imp can read minds, either directly or through some sort of Holmes-like power of deduction. Whatever The Imp believes you value will be ground zero for some assault at some random point in the future; it is not a matter of if but when and, more worrisome, how. The flip side of The Imp's clairvoyance is that the weeds, bugs, shrubs and fungus that one despises will somehow flourish in proportion to the withering of the thing you cherish. So, a battle with The Imp is intellectual as well as material. The value one places on a thing must be kept in the deepest recesses of the mind; the mental curtain must be drawn tight. A crack of light, and all is lost.

When Janet and I first moved to "the country" we still entertained that warm, fuzzy view of Nature. We had plans for improving the landscape with native and ornamental plants, and we bought fine specimens of rhododendrons, forsythia, mountain laurel, hydrangeas and a lilac. There were already azaleas, hemlocks, yews and even a tulip and a few crocuses in place, although some seemed a little worse for wear. There were a few things that I was not so keen on; malformed hollies and an overgrown boxwood led the list. (To me, boxwood smells of the ripe urine of an unaltered tom cat.) The Imp made its presence and intent known very quickly. We were caught entirely off guard; we lost before we knew an attack was underway. Here, for your consideration, are images of  those plants now.

The Lilac

Our postmortems and inquests led us to two resolutions: First, we would leave the skeletons of certain plants as a reminder to never purchase another, unless we were prepared to sacrifice significant energy and money on its behalf. (Let's just say, we haven't gotten any new plants.) Second, we would fight for one specific plant, a lilac that we had placed on one of the few flat, sunny spots on the property. This would be our line in the sand.

The Lilac

The first few years brought only minor skirmishes, including a notable episode with a mealybug infestation, eventually brought to heel with insecticidal soap. The tiny luffas were a pain, but we managed to give those little mealy jerks the ol' scrub a dub. The deer were as persistent as ever, especially during winter, when they would browse the tips of Lilac's branches. But they would occasionally get a hankerin' for a lilac salad, too. The deer challenge was met with a commercial deer repellent. This aptly named concoction uses rotten eggs as a base, with roadkill extract, diaper squeezings and ash from reputable American skunk crematoria. (Inferior formulas with cheap Chinese puppy or kitten ash should be avoided.) The repellent helped and was reapplied after rain or snowfall, or whenever the shrub started to smell good. The Imp deployed a few nose-less soldiers. Stiltgrass and dogbane constantly encroached on Lilac; we slashed them back. Honeysuckle vines slithered in to strangle her and an Ailanthus tree tried to eclipse Lilac's sunshine. We cut them and poisoned their stumps. We were merciless; we took prisoners and performed enhanced interrogations. Those that died were the lucky ones.

Despite our attentions, the lilac failed to bloom for quite some time. We weren't too concerned at first. A plant needs time to adjust to new soil. First year, sleep; second year, creep; third year, leap ... or so the folksy gardeners say. We did get one good season of blooms, before it went back to creeping. It must have been a leap year. We had resigned ourselves to accept creep as the new normal; drop a load of magic stink on Lilac in exchange for a few blossoms. That's what real winning looks like, kids.

Unfortunately, The Imp was just biding its time and chose 2017 for a series of full frontal assaults. Its first big move was to arrange one of the warmest Februarys on record, prompting the witless lilac to leaf out and develop tiny embryonic inflorescences. Then came March and a sudden return to subfreezing temperatures that threatened to nip Lilac's tender shoots. This had the potential to send us all the way back to sleep status, maybe even the big sleep. So, Lilac was wrapped in an igloo of tarps, supported by stakes and bound together with zip ties. We also used a long extension cord to energize a heated water bucket that steamed away within the igloo during frigid nights. When warmer weather returned, we disassembled the apparatus to allow a little photosynthesis. The Imp tested our resolve again by arranging yet another bout of freezing temps. We rebuilt the igloo and resolved to repeat this as long and as often as necessary.

Left: Tarp igloo built to protect Lilac from Jack Frost. Right: A few blooms that Lilac offered as a "Thank you".

Spring finally arrived and our efforts were rewarded with a few blossoms. We had held the line at creep. The Imp would have to up its game. The dreaded concoction was still deployed, but the aroma of Satan's Armpit was now laced with the sweet notes of lilac. I felt like handing out cigars.

Our success in the first major battle and the improving weather led us to a misguided sense of security, and we went back to business as usual. Then, one day in mid-August, we were strolling the grounds and making inspections. We noticed a good bit of insect activity around Lilac and drew closer to investigate. The bush seemed to swarm with gigantic wasps. They resembled yellowjackets, Vespula sp. (Vespidae), but were substantially larger. The wasps were entering and exiting Lilac's leafy vestiture in a rather steady stream, with those exiting often bumping into those arriving. They seemed to wrestle a bit in flight, before resuming their travels. I first surmised that the wasps had built a nest in or near Lilac. This wasn't particularly alarming in itself and could even be a plus if they kept the deer at bay. Having been well trained by my interactions with normal yellowjackets, however, I was a little perplexed by the wasps' seeming indifference to us.

As a log turner I search for spiders, centipedes and such things and get stung by yellowjackets once or twice every year. Every so often, I turn a log and see a lone yellowjacket at the opening to a small tunnel. The wasp seems unperturbed and, during my early years, I assumed that if I put the log back gently and walked slowly away--whistling and with my hands clasped behind by back--the wasp would forgive my trespass and give me the benefit of the doubt. However, wasps do not forgive and are apparently programmed to teach log turners a lesson, no matter what. I would stroll 10 to 20 feet away and, just when I thought I was in the clear, there would be the sensation of a sudden electric shock, usually on the back of my hands or wrists. Now when I roll a log and see a day-dreaming  yellowjacket, I run like crazy. This behavior may seem strange to onlookers, such as a cluster of entomology students, but the benefits outweigh any loss in pride.

Anyway, back at Lilac, I peered in and saw scattered clusters of giant wasps. They seemed to be ripping and chewing at the bark and exposing Lilac's innards. At the time, it seemed that this could only be motivated by pure vindictiveness. What on earth could they be doing?  I turned to Janet and told her what was happening. She sprang into action and shook one of the branches to dislodge a giant wasp. Well, the unintended experiment produced results. It seems that there is a limit to the wasp's tolerance afterall, and she got stung. She stormed to the garage to find some chemical weapons, and the break in the action allowed me to take some pictures. Janet returned with the dregs of the old insecticidal soap, which to me smelled remarkably similar to the deer repellent. It actually seemed to drive them off, at least temporarily. Janet then retreated to the pharmacopia for antihistamines and cortisone cream.

A quick search of the internet revealed that the wasps were European Hornets, Vespa crabro (Vespidae), alien relatives of yellowjackets and paper wasps. The girdling of lilacs and other woody plants is a well-known hornet behavior, sometimes explained as the collection of fiber for nest construction. But nest material is actually derived from rotting wood mixed with saliva. Thus, these things live in a kind of spittoon (Ask your grandfather.). The girdling of woody stems appears to be a mechanism to access plant sap. [See the article on the topic by blog follower Dr. Albert Green (Santamour & Green, 1984).] Otherwise, hornets are largely carnivorous, feeding on a wide variety of insects. They may even try to subdue cicadas, as shown in a video in my last post, Nature in Fragments, in which I misidentified a European hornet as a cicada killer, Sphecius speciosus (Crabronidae). [Hey. It's free, so get of my back about it!]
 

Hornet damage

That night, Janet and I were sitting in our basement discussing strategy and playing with our cats Dickens and Fuzzball. Our favorite games are catch-the-disappearing-stick and Da Bird. The Norman Rockwell moment was interrupted by a persistent tapping at the sliding-glass door. I looked and was stupefied. There were half a dozen hornets banging against the glass, as if intent on doing to us what they had been doing to Lilac. Giant night-flying wasps, really? It was like a Hitchcock movie. Janet, still stinging, charged the door to confront and slaughter them. (I suspect this was a steroidal rage fueled by excessive cortisone cream.) She opened the door, and a couple wasps got inside. Hilarity ensued. We got to experience the pleasure of dispatching a couple hornets, and additional satisfaction the following night when one was captured by a large orb-weaving spider, Neoscona crucifera (Araneidae), that had made its web in front of the same door. I thought about sitting there all night with popcorn to watch the slow-motion festivities.

Left: Night-flying European hornet trying to enter our home to strip the bark from our limbs. Center: A casualty of the hornet wars. Right: A third belligerent enters the fray.

It turns out that Vespa crabro is one of the few night-flying wasps, even though recent research has shown that their eyes are no better at seeing in the dark than day-flying wasps and may even be a little worse. At one point I entertained the possibility that the hornets had supernatural abilities, perhaps communicating in some buggy version of Aramaic or Latin. We would be needing an exorcist. However, I screwed my faith in science to the sticking place and clicked my way to the web site of the University of Maryland Extension Service for information and help. Indeed, there was a page devoted to European Hornets, and I remember it reading something like this [cue harp music]....

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Congratulations! You somehow identified the pest yourself as <Giant European Hornet>. This is a really big hornet from Europe. Here's a dark, grainy, off-color picture of a hornet scanned from an old EPA magic-lantern slide.

This is the only true hornet in Maryland. Now, you laypeople may have heard of the Bald-faced "Hornet", Dolichovespula maculata (Vespidae), but it's really a black and white yellowjacket, even though it's not yellow. So, it's not a true hornet, but it is a true yellowjacket. Got it? True hornets may chomp on lilacs. They live in a group of over 100 workers and often fly around, even at night. They aren't as mean-spirited as some wasps, such as the bald-faced hornet, which, as you recall, is not a true hornet. They may nest in the walls of your home, somewhere in your barn or in a treehole out in the woods somewhere. To kill them, call an exterminator or put on your beekeeper suit and spray them during the day time. Follow the directions on the bottle of whatever poison you happen to find. Our specialists suggest some kind of insecticide for true hornets. Screw IPM and that organic crap. There are no alternatives to insecticide, even if the hornets are nesting under your kid's bed. You want to save your shrub, don't you? Don't you?   
   
Still not convinced? (Shield your eyes, Timmy!) Here's a graphic picture of a holly branch that hornets have gnawed on. Look at it. Look ...at ...it!

Well, now, isn't saving your beautiful, suffering, oxygen-rendering (and thus life-giving) shrub worth a few points off junior's IQ? You can always adopt new pets. And who really needs squirrels, anyway? Think about it. Think about it!
     Follow these links for more useful tips.

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Modern extension? Seemed more like future retraction. Anyway, it was clear enough...we were on our own.

  Henry Wadsworth "Hank" Kimball. County Extension Agent.
Combing the woods for a hornet's nest that might be in a treehole 30 feet from the ground did not seem like fun to us. Nor did shooting a geyser of insecticide into the sky. We reasoned that we needed some kind of barrier akin to the igloo but which allows sun and air to get to Lilac. We found a thing called Agfabric on Amazon, bought a bunch and made a tent out of stakes and those big metal paper clips. It worked!

A few hornets got trapped inside and started screaming in Aramaic to be released, but we were incapable of pity at this point. Hornets continued to bounce impotently off the new force field. It took them days to give up entirely. We had stopped the hemorrhaging of lilac sap with hemorrhaging from our bank account.

Were we victorious? No. The Imp had won. It had never been after Lilac, its goal had always been to inflict physical, emotional and financial pain on us. The Imp has had a lot of practice and is very good at what it does. One can respect that. For the most part, our psyches have moved on, but there are parts that still huddle in a dark corner wielding a pointed stick, twitching and shivering, with all senses alert, waiting in dread for The Imp's next move.