For the second time in less than a week, a wasp somehow found its way into my bedroom.

Like the first wasp, this wasp was sitting on the screen window trying to find it’s way out.  I closed the window so that it might have a better chance of finding it’s way back out, but if I’m honest, it was mostly so that it didn’t fly around the house.

Later, I returned to the bedroom to find that the wasp had not found its way outside and instead somehow found its way out of the closed window and onto the adjacent window!  It was inside the bedroom and the only window it could fly out of was closed.

I’m going to have to kill it.

That was my thought in that first moment.

But then the moment passed, and I realized that I was about to act based on fear.  I was afraid of experiencing pain.  In this case, it was the physical pain of a wasp’s sting, but other types of pain (emotional, psychological, etc.) are equally able to evoke fear.

In the next moment, I realized something.

This is a chance for redemption.

You see, the first wasp’s escape didn’t fare so well either.  I tried to release it from the confines of the window, but the wasp ended up dying in the course of my rescue operation.  I guess I’m a bit more Lennie than George when it comes to handling small creatures.

I wasn’t happy about the first failed rescue attempt, so I pocketed my fear of being stung and grabbed the same “tools” (a clear plastic CD spindle cover and a piece of cardboard) from my last wasp encounter.

I was going to do it right this time.

And I did.  I covered the wasp with the CD spindle cover as it sat on the window and then slid the cardboard under the spindle so that I could lift the spindle and wasp off the window without letting the wasp out.  I took the entire contraption outside, walked a bit from my house, put the spindle on some grass and lifted removed the lid.

Then I ran.

Ok, not really, but I definitely didn’t hang around to see the wasp fly off to its wasp buddies to tell them about the adventure in the hyumahn house it just had.

Things ended nicely this time, for which I am grateful, but I wonder how often we have chances to redeem ourselves from past failures but never get past the fear?  I’m definitely more aware of fear as a motivator now, and I hope it sticks.

Fly on little wasp.  Please don’t come back.