Yellow jackets in yellow skies

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

We started out to observe the red planet Mars, but ended up intrigued

by yellow.

Unless you’ve been on the dark side of the moon for the past few

weeks, you must have heard that this is the closest that Mars will

come to Earth in our lifetimes. In fact, it will be many generations

before earthlings have another opportunity to view our red neighbor

this closely.

While astronomy isn’t a burning passion with us, our friends make

us aware of unusual astronomical events. Not content with just

informing us, they force us to “enjoy” these events with them. Since

that usually entails a delightful picnic preceded by an enticing

array of appetizers and wines, we are happy to go. By the time night

falls, we’re more than ready to lean back in a folding chair and gaze

at stars.

Our Mars adventure took us to Main Divide Road off Ortega Highway,

just over the Orange County line. We found a nice pullout where we

were totally surrounded by coastal sage and scrub oak woodlands, away

from the bright lights of Lake Elsinore.

As soon as we arrived, Vic trotted off into the bushes after

wrentits, mountain quail and poorwills. I set about studying

buckwheat and other flowering shrubs. This left our buddy Larry

Rolewic to set up the table with salami, cheeses, olives, crackers,

hummus, grapes and some libations. We dug into the feast.

As we snacked and talked, we couldn’t help but notice the valley

below us. A yellow layer of what passes for air hung over Riverside

County like a pall of death. Formed by a reaction of sunlight and

auto exhaust, the yellow-brown haze of smog looked chokingly thick as

it drifted up the valley on the afternoon breeze.

We make much of this smog in Orange and Los Angeles counties as we

drive to and from work. The unlucky Riverside residents get to live

with it as it blows inland. That’s probably why Riverside just took

top “honors” of having the worst air quality in the nation. We drank

a toast to them and turned our attention to dinner.

The entree was fried chicken from Ralphs Deli, with potato salad

and a cucumber-cherry tomato salad straight from our garden. It was

the chicken that attracted the yellow jackets. We were soon waving

off a marauding horde of a dozen or more.

These black and yellow striped pests of summer are familiar

visitors to most picnics. Unlike bees, which sting only if severely

provoked, yellow jackets have nasty tempers and will sting with very

little provocation. Also unlike bees, which sting only once and die,

yellow jackets can sting again and again without injury to

themselves.

The wasps were homing in on the smell of the chicken, so I kept my

piece in continuous motion to confuse them. Larry and Vic swatted at

the insects sporadically and were more pestered, so I guess my

technique was effective. Somehow we managed to get food and drink

into our mouths without any accompanying insects. Good thing. A

yellow jacket sting in the mouth can be dangerous or even fatal. Even

if the victim isn’t hyperallergic to the venom, their throat and

airway can swell shut just from inflammation from the sting.

Yellow jackets are notorious for hiding inside an open soft drink

can, then stinging the unsuspecting imbiber. That’s as a good reason

as any to drink from an open plastic cup on a picnic. We drank a

toast to the yellow jackets.

After finishing with our chicken, we set the bones down and let

the wasps have at them. The yellow jackets swarmed over bones that

had been picked clean by our standards. Each wasp in turn carefully

peeled back a strip of meat from the bone, tucked it under his body,

and flew away with it. They worked quickly with their mouthparts to

chew off a lump as big as their thorax. As they took off in flight,

they seemed to stagger under the load at first. They made a couple of

short circles to get oriented, and flew straight back to their nest.

After the yellow jacket performance, Mars was almost

anti-climactic. We set up our telescopes and waited for dark. Mars

rose brightly in the southeast. We were able to make out one of the

white polar ice caps as well as some dark spots on the red planet.

The ice caps on Mars are mostly frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice.

We had heard that we would be able to see impact basins and dust

storms with backyard telescopes. We didn’t. Maybe such details were

obscured by all that yellow smog that pervades the Southland no

matter how far from civilization we appear to have roamed.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].