Larval stage of Murder Hornet (Bastardus bastardus). Don’t try to pet it.

The ‘Murder Hornet’, Up Close

Threat, menace, or something even worse?

The news of the arrival of two separate ‘murder hornet’ colonies on Vancouver Island was just what needed in a news cycle that had grown wearisome from dull reports of the plague body count, the steady, bland leadership of the President, and an economy in freefall. At last, something perilous!

Unfortunately, the New York Times under-reports the story of these diabolical insects. Lame-stream media! Only Medium dares to unveil the true dangers of the situation. We’re a gruff lot of investigative journalists, rolled up sleeves, cigars clamped in our unshaven jaws, lambasting the copy-boys, and by ‘copy-boys’ we mean ‘our cats’. We eschew ten-dollar words like ‘lambaste’. And ‘eschew.’

Murder hornets stinging their way through a helmet. Through such attacks, many a knight fell on the battlefield, his breast crimson with blood, as his fair lady knelt and lamented, and his dog howled mournfully. Through want of a stout heart and a ready sword, wars were lost, kingdoms fell and the course of history was changed.

What are the facts?

Q: Is the Murder Hornet sentient?

A: Sadly, yes. Its diabolical craftiness allowed it to construct a bamboo raft to cross the Pacific and seize new territories overseas. It is capable of hypnotizing a victim, so do not look into their eyes. Entomologists at the University of Winnipeg, researching the murder hornet’s ‘language,’ discover that it is semaphoring the words “Kill, kill, kill, my brothers! Death is sweet! Kill!”

Q: Are there murder hornets in my yard right now?

A: Indubitably. They’re biding their time, waiting for you to have a fight with the wife, so you can go in the backyard with a can of beer and seethe in your Adirondack chair, your guard dropped. Or perhaps they’re hiding until your adorable toddler to come out in her little pink swim suit, about to frolic in an inflatable pool. One can imagine the steadicam POV shot of these aerial killers, lurking, buzzing, ready to strike, as suspenseful music ramps up the mood.

Incidentally, the collective noun for murder hornets is “A Matterhorn of murder hornets” seeing that swarms of these hornets have indeed reached 14, 692 feet tall, like the Alp.

Q: How big is a murder hornet?

A: So few have survived the attack that records vary, but the bug is presumed to be about a meter long — meter being a term for a unit of measurement that Europeans call a ‘yard’. Some grow to six feet tall. Their stingers are usually a foot long. In the Ainu Islands, they’re preserved and used as daggers.

Q: Their sting has been likened to “red hot thumb tacks.” Is this true?

A: Since so few have survived being stung by murder hornets, the best description we have is from the French scholar Bertrand de Beaune, who, among his other accomplishments, translated the Marquise de Sade’s Justine into Japanese. He wrote, “Their sting was indescribable, a sort of pain that touched the horizon of pleasure. After submitting to the sharp ruthless jab, after the burning venom poured into the veins, one entered an ecstatic state. The angry humming of their wings was like a choir of seraphim. These remorseless, impassive insects transported me.”

Q: Is it true that the venom of murder hornets was once used in medicine?

A: The beneficial qualities of the murder hornet were known as long ago as ancient Greece. Aristocles of Syracuse (c. 300 BCA) a commentator on Galen, described how physicians treating those with heart attacks prescribed letting a murder hornet sting a sufferer in the chest. It worked, much as today’s defibrillators shock the heart into beating. Unfortunately, patients tended to die horribly a minute later. But this way you could ask them where they hid their money and what kind of cake they wanted served at their funeral.

A vision of the apocalypse: Murder Hornets are watched in dread by one of their victims, who has gone insane from the venom and thinks he’s in a commedia del arte play.

Q: What are the affects of a murder of a murder hornet sting?

A: You mean, “effects,” yes? People always get that mixed up.

Q: Yeah, whatever.

A: Well, the ‘effects,’ which is the word you were groping for, are instantaneous. The pitiful few who survive envy the dead. The pain is so great that it causes permanent insanity. Theatrical Tom o’ Bedlam raving. I mean, the whole last act of King Lear. Some believe themselves to BE murder hornets, and run around flapping their arms and buzzing.

Q: Can they be stopped?

A: No. Absolute panic is the proper way to meet these invaders from the bowels of hell.

Q: Are you actually a murder hornet yourself, writing this? You seem to be in the tank for these things.

A: Silence, puny human!