A saga of the meat bees

The remains of the hornets nest after the skunk's first visit.

"What's wrong, Silly Boy?"

A bewildered Fred had just slinked into the garage and crawled between the table saw and work bench.  

Yellow jackets were crawling in his coat like raging ninjas, probing for dog hide with their stings.

I dragged him out from his hiding place, slapped the spiteful insects, and stomped them on the floor.

We had coexisted all summer with a nest of "meat bees" next to the house, and I had a hunch that Fred had roused them by scratching a dirt bed near their nest.

Sure enough, they were swarming, and I was their next victim.

Only by peeking around the corner of the house could I survey the ninjas safely.

There was no sign that Fred had been scraping a dirt bed.

Then the ground heaved ominously near the nest entrance.

Was a squadron of killer wasps about to erupt?

The ground lifted several more times, tracing a path away from the nest, and suddenly it dawned on me: 

I had just witnessed a rare event -- subterranean predation!

A mole had torn into the meat bee's underground fortress.

Maybe it had the sweet taste of meat bee larvae on its lips, but this mole was beating a hasty retreat from the yellow warriors.

To prove my supposition, I really should have grabbed a shovel, flipped that mole to the surface, caught it, and taken a picture while fending off the meat bees.

I might have tried it in my youth, but the codger was satisfied to marvel at the image of the mole breast-stroking through dirt with mean-assed meat bees stinging his velvet keister. 

Yes, moles are known to feed on the larvae of underground hornets. The paper mache nest is no defense to a hungry mole that scents a comb of tender wasp larvae.

Anyway, the meat bees had to go, because I wanted to see what the mole had done to the nest.

Neighbor Larry delivered some wasp spray, and the next day I donned my running shoes and zapped the nest entrance.

A few dead wasps littered the ground the morning after, but the ninjas were still coming and going. 

I gamely sprayed again, expecting to excavate the next day.

I was ready to start digging until I heard the menacing hum of meat bees underground. 

I sprayed several more days.

Finally the hive was silent, and I began to scratch away the overlying dirt. 

I found the mole's tunnel, and carefully uncovered the domed gray paper roof of the meat bees' inner sanctum. 

The caress of the rake brought them back to life again! 

It took a full week to annihilate the colony, but the coups d'grace was apparently delivered by a skunk. 

The scene looked like someone had taken a small rototiller to the nest.

I buried the remains of the nest and smoothed the surface, but the skunk dug it up again that night and the next. 

Ah, what a saga . . . Hungry mole attacks nest of meat bees, meat bees mount courageous defense, homeowner and dog become co-lateral damage.

Homeowner vainly wages chemical warfare, and a skunk finishes the job, proving that Old Stinky eradicates meat bees better than moles or the petrochemical industry. 

Back on the Flume

With the exception of this mole the codger has little to show in the way of natural history.

The reason is that we were in Italy for three weeks, where camera trapping rarely crossed my mind.

But I am getting back into the daily routine of walking the flume and recording natural history.

Thus the partially eaten broad-handed mole.

I thought it was newsworthy, since mammalian predators, unlike raptors, often lose their appetite when they discover that their prey is an unpalatable shrew or mole.

The killer of this mole was hungry enough to make a meal of it. Usually I find the bitten but uneaten carcass. 

I found it the other day, put it in my shirt pocket, and deposited it discreetly in my office.

The redhead managed to find it of course, and I was compelled to photograph it sooner than I had planned.

The flume was practically dry when we left on May 1, which means that PG&E had cut off the water from Butte Creek and the Feather River for maintenance.

They dredged it, and when I got home I found it racing at a pace I have never seen before.

A few days later I watched a limp Bambi tumble surrealistically under the surface, a casualty of misadventure.

So I'm getting back in my groove, and next week you'll see some pictures of urban Italian wildlife.