The psychologist Jung said we each have a Shadow, the suppressed and often dark facet of ourselves that is hidden and denied. Many ancient peoples realised that Mother Nature, for all her harmony and abundance, has her Shadow too. In Hindu cosmology the dark aspect of the Goddess is revered in the form of Kāli Mā, the black mother. Adorned with a necklace of skulls and surrounded by a halo of flames, two of her four arms grip a sword and a dismembered head. She is the slayer, a drinker of blood, whose devotees may carry bones and lurk near the thick smoke of the cremation pyres.
One Sunday, during my morning yoga practice, this crawled into my own awareness in the 6-legged form of the Pompilid wasp.
Better known as a spider-hunting wasp and built like a jet-black fighter plane, it rudely interrupted my yoga by dragging a very large rain spider onto my stoep. So my mind left its focus on the breath and became mesmerised by a gruesome circus.
Predators who slaughter with jaws and claws bring regular gore to nature TV. Thanks to footage of wild dogs launching their attack on a victim’s intestines, we are aware the killing is not always quick and painless either. But paralysing your prey, then keeping it alive to meet a grisly fate, brings up issues for me.
.jpg)
Paralysed rain spider (Palystes)
The Pompilid wasp takes its spider hostage to a lair where it then proceeds to lay eggs into the creature’s body. The young eventually hatch and feed on the live spider from the inside. This is why, when the wasp flew off on an unknown errand and left its prey unattended, I watched the huge spider, on its back with legs folded in the air, with morbid fascination. As I noticed two of the legs move slightly, I couldn’t help wishing the poison would wear off so it could escape before its captor’s return.
The eternal dilemma: to interfere with nature or not. Did I leave this brutal insect to get on with its cruel scheme? I decided to play the war journalist and hide behind the lens.
The wasp was hyper-aware of me. As I grabbed my camera and crept closer the macro adjustments made a series of tiny clicks, setting the insect off on loud circular flying sprees around me. Sometimes it just stared straight at me. And I mean STARE. I wondered if it thought the camera was some kind of square insect trying to steal its prize.
I left it to its devices and it laboriously pulled the spider to a hole in the brickwork of my house. When I returned from my pranayama the dragging was complete. Only the tips of its legs poked out of the nest. Any attempts I made to get closer were scarpered by the vigilant Pompilid surging towards me like a kamikaze bomber.
The fact that this whole incident coincided with my yoga practice got me deliberating. Yogic thought reveres buddhi, the power of discrimination and understanding as something uniquely human. The ability to distinguish between just and unjust, kind and cruel, combined with the discipline to control our drives, is said to set us apart from the animal world.
That didn’t stop me from analysing the creature’s ethics. Why did a wasp evolve this fatal relationship with one unfortunate spider? Couldn’t it just lay its eggs somewhere else with a nearby food supply? The part about the young eating it alive from the inside is what really sickened me. It was all far too much like torture. As if it’s not enough to trap a prisoner in a dark hole, unable to move, yet possibly aware of what’s happening. I wondered how many millennia it took to develop that paralysing poison.
Many who hear this tale may shrug their shoulders and say: “that’s nature.” If humans behaved this way they would be punished, but animals: who are we to police them? Imagine lining up all Pompilid wasps and giving them a stern talking to. Or imprisoning them in miniature stocks and throwing tiny berries at them. Maybe they need counselling about rearing their children in a more moral environment.
Do we just let this cycle repeat itself over generations of buzzing, stinging, paralyzing parents?
Faced with that spectacle I cannot deny I beheld Mother Nature’s hidden face, pre-menstrual, devoid of make-up, raw. It was Gaia at her most ruthless. .jpg)
One Sunday, during my morning yoga practice, this crawled into my own awareness in the 6-legged form of the Pompilid wasp.
Better known as a spider-hunting wasp and built like a jet-black fighter plane, it rudely interrupted my yoga by dragging a very large rain spider onto my stoep. So my mind left its focus on the breath and became mesmerised by a gruesome circus.
Predators who slaughter with jaws and claws bring regular gore to nature TV. Thanks to footage of wild dogs launching their attack on a victim’s intestines, we are aware the killing is not always quick and painless either. But paralysing your prey, then keeping it alive to meet a grisly fate, brings up issues for me.
.jpg)
Paralysed rain spider (Palystes)
The Pompilid wasp takes its spider hostage to a lair where it then proceeds to lay eggs into the creature’s body. The young eventually hatch and feed on the live spider from the inside. This is why, when the wasp flew off on an unknown errand and left its prey unattended, I watched the huge spider, on its back with legs folded in the air, with morbid fascination. As I noticed two of the legs move slightly, I couldn’t help wishing the poison would wear off so it could escape before its captor’s return.
The eternal dilemma: to interfere with nature or not. Did I leave this brutal insect to get on with its cruel scheme? I decided to play the war journalist and hide behind the lens.
The wasp was hyper-aware of me. As I grabbed my camera and crept closer the macro adjustments made a series of tiny clicks, setting the insect off on loud circular flying sprees around me. Sometimes it just stared straight at me. And I mean STARE. I wondered if it thought the camera was some kind of square insect trying to steal its prize.
I left it to its devices and it laboriously pulled the spider to a hole in the brickwork of my house. When I returned from my pranayama the dragging was complete. Only the tips of its legs poked out of the nest. Any attempts I made to get closer were scarpered by the vigilant Pompilid surging towards me like a kamikaze bomber.
The fact that this whole incident coincided with my yoga practice got me deliberating. Yogic thought reveres buddhi, the power of discrimination and understanding as something uniquely human. The ability to distinguish between just and unjust, kind and cruel, combined with the discipline to control our drives, is said to set us apart from the animal world.
That didn’t stop me from analysing the creature’s ethics. Why did a wasp evolve this fatal relationship with one unfortunate spider? Couldn’t it just lay its eggs somewhere else with a nearby food supply? The part about the young eating it alive from the inside is what really sickened me. It was all far too much like torture. As if it’s not enough to trap a prisoner in a dark hole, unable to move, yet possibly aware of what’s happening. I wondered how many millennia it took to develop that paralysing poison.
Many who hear this tale may shrug their shoulders and say: “that’s nature.” If humans behaved this way they would be punished, but animals: who are we to police them? Imagine lining up all Pompilid wasps and giving them a stern talking to. Or imprisoning them in miniature stocks and throwing tiny berries at them. Maybe they need counselling about rearing their children in a more moral environment.
Do we just let this cycle repeat itself over generations of buzzing, stinging, paralyzing parents?
Faced with that spectacle I cannot deny I beheld Mother Nature’s hidden face, pre-menstrual, devoid of make-up, raw. It was Gaia at her most ruthless.
.jpg)
Tachypompilus ignitus in action
Comments