The "It Can't Get Any Worse, Can It?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the morning paper when I came upon a story and immediately thought to myself, Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse!  The article was titled "The Real Danger of Murder Hornets," and described insects that are close to two inches long and can kill a person with one sting.  

This is the size of the head of the Murder Hornet!

As if over a million and a half deaths as of today in the USA, to COVID-19, wasn't enough, now we have these huge insects arriving from Asia that can bite the head off a honey bee in mid-flight.  But, the more I read the better I began to feel, since the murder hornet isn't the same category of threat as the virus.  Only those that have allergies to insects could possibly die from a single bite.  For the rest of us, it would probably take a few more bits to bury us.  Make you feel any better?  The Murder Hornet is known as Vespa mandarinia or the Asian giant Hornet and the more I read about it, the more I realized we have less to worry about the sting than we do with the fact that they decapitate other insects to feed the bodies to their young.  

The Murder Hornet devouring a leaf.

But, if they begin to decimate the honey bee population in the U.S., we may be in trouble, since pollinators, most often honey bees, are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take and increase our nation's crop values each year by more than $15 billion.  And, to make matters worse, honey bee decline has been happening for more than 30 years already.  If the Murder Hornet takes hold of the U.S., it could dramatically change the available plants and food here.  So, how did these insects find their way here from Asia?  Perhaps the same way that the Spotted lantern fly and the snakehead fish did in the past few years.  They all seem to be well organized and are taking over, strangling the competition.  As of now it seems that the Murder Hornet is the least of our worries, but if the U.S. neglects to find a way to eliminate them in the near future, we will have one more problem that will lead to a decline in food production...and that may lead to a total destruction of what we know as the United States of America.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

One more look at the size of the Murder Hornet.  Scared yet?