"Taking the country by swarm!"

The picture I saw on the internet as the country went into lockdown during the first couple weeks in March 2020 was the stuff nightmares were made of.

The image of the deadly pest up close was of a “Murder Hornet”, a deadly insect that goes by the more proper name the Asian giant hornet according to Wikipedia. The black and yellow head with its pointy antennas stared straight at me like it couldn’t wait to jump out of my laptop screen to spit its venom in my face while finding a place to stick its ¼ inch long stinger in me which some have said is the equivalent of a hot rod soaring through your insides.

Up until March 2020 the United States had nothing to worry about this “asshole with wings” or “Motherfucker out of Hell” as they could be referred to according to an online meme I saw since the species have only been indigenous to Asia. I first heard about them five years ago, might have been longer, when the deadly insects were reportedly out and about during springtime attacking and killing the Asian population.

As if COVID-19 wasn’t enough for America to deal with at the time, now we had to deal with what might as well been a part of those ten plagues Moses warned Pharoah about that would come if the king didn’t let God’s people go as written in the Bible’s Book of Exodus.

With the “Murder Hornets” arrival in Washington state at the time, the question I asked myself was how long would it be before they arrive in all fifty states? 

For years it seems the Africanized bee, also known as the “killer” bees who have resided in the southern states like Texas were the ones with a foothold. I haven’t heard much about “killer” bee attacks, however, the past several years. Every now and then these other assholes with wings make the local news where someone stumbled upon a nest and wound up in the hospital with over a fifty plus stingers in addition to the first responders who battled the "killer bees" during emergency calls.

The fact is though, most of those people got stung multiple times and lived to tell about it. Between the Asian giant hornets and the Africanized bees the question begets should I stumble upon one of their nests one fateful day which of the pests I encounter would I have a fighting chance? I’d rather risk my life on the killer bees than an almost giant two-inch hornet! At least maybe I’ll live to write about the encounter – perhaps even blog about it! It almost makes me appreciate the African killer bees!

I have to give these two “assholes with wings” a little credit though. Both species hate people! They want nothing to do with us humans and animals and will do everything possible to avoid contact. Hey, people are like that too! Both pests make their nests inside dead tree trunks, abandoned homes and farming areas in hopes some two-legged human or four-legged animal will not stumble upon their buzzing secluded home and piss them off to where they have to go into attack mode.

Their reaction to humans and animals should be enough to tell us “STAY AWAY!” They don’t need a sign to spell it out for us. If they did and were that smart they’d perform the same kinds of skywriting stunts mini-aircrafts often do above the skies for us all to read from the ground.

On one side of the coin, if the “Murder Hornets” did make their way across the states, these deadly insects will be just another one of nature’s by-products and God’s creatures that we would have to live with the way we live with black widow spiders, snakes, roaches, fire-ants, rats and bed bugs. How many times has some rich Floridian resident with a swimming pool woken up in hopes of getting a morning swim before work only to find an alligator resting at the bottom of their pool?

Art does, however, have a funny, ok maybe, not some humorous way of imitating life. The one movie that came to my mind upon hearing about the “Murder Hornets” was an Irwin Allen all-star disaster film headed by Michael Caine called “The Swarm” (1978) about the invasion of the African killer bees. To my surprise when I looked up the book on which the film was based by Arthur Herzog on Amazon I found it to still be available for purchase.

Audiences avoided “The Swarm” in droves upon the film's release in 1978. Viewers still craved catastrophic films showing typed casted characters in peril. It was the laughably bad dialogue and cheap special effects audiences tired of. "The Swarm" almost succeeded in ending the 1970's disaster genre until the arrival of “Twister” and “Independence Day” in 1996 and “Titanic” (1997) that brought audiences back to the box office.

I have said time and again if “Hollyweird” wants to continue remaking movies that don’t NEED to be remade, they should put their million-dollar budgets redoing the bad ones. I wrote back in March 2020 during the COVID lockdown how among the things I would do if I got “the VID” (I have caught it TWICE now in two years) I’d work on is my screenwriting.

I’d order a couple copies of Herzog’s book – one for me to read and the other to adapt into my own screenplay except the star this time would be the "Murder Hornets." Now there’s a disaster horror remake audiences probably wouldn’t mind seeing get made. If nothing else the menacing subject would certainly be timely.

Too bad the “Murder Hornets” only know how to attack and kill people. Knowing someone like me would be going out of their way to write a new screenplay with them as the star perhaps the species might be a little nicer to us and appreciate my efforts.

To quote Seth Brundle, however, the ill-fated scientist Jeff Goldblum played in “The Fly” (1986) who saw himself as an insect who “dreamt he was a man and loved it” but told his journalist girlfriend (Geena Davis) that the dream was over and “the fly” was awake, “Murder Hornets” are no better than any other insect.

“Insects don’t have politics,” Brundle said. “They’re very brutal. No compassion. No compromise. We can’t trust the insect.”

What a shame these Asian giant hornets have no feelings. In the two years since their arrival in Washington state in 2020 the Entomological Society of America and the Entomological Society of Canada no longer call the insects “Murder Hornets.” They refer to them as the “Northern giant hornet.”

“I don’t want my Asian American or Pacific Islander colleagues, friends and family to have any negative connotations with invasive or pest species that might be used against them in a negative way,” ESA President Jessica Ware told CNN. “Common names are an important tool for entomologists to communicate with the public about insects and insect science. Northern giant hornet is both scientifically accurate and easy to understand, and it avoids evoking fear or discrimination.”



I can’t speak for the Murder…excuse me, “Northern giant hornet” but I suspect they’d be pissed knowing the frightening name they’ve worked so hard to keep for decades that had the Asian population cowering in fear every spring is now a part of American “cancel culture” here in the states.

Perhaps it’s a good thing the Northern giant hornets have no compassion let alone think there is such a thing as compromise.

I can’t speak for the “Murder Hornets.” If I were one though I’d be furious knowing my much feared “hornet” name is now being used by the Dodge Motor Company to promote their latest SUV in 2023 called the Dodge Hornet for consumers to buy and I’m not getting any of the shared profits out of this deal!

©3/22/23