NORTHWEST WILDLIFE ONLINE

His wife noticed it first. Not surprising; Linny was an attentive, observant person. Just a blur of motion near the back fence preceded by the crouching attention of the family cat. The animal was in that attitude of intense concentration only felines can display: body low, ears sharply erect, tail waiving and quivering.

“What’s that?” she asked. There was an odd lilt in her question.

Don looked up from the newspaper.

“What’s what?” He was slightly annoyed because he was reading the comics, and because it was early on Saturday, and because the funny page was his 9 a.m., second cup of coffee ritual.  So Don didn’t like the disruption at all, but he noted the pronounced edge in Linny’s voice.  She was standing by the sliding glass door of their TV room and staring intently at something in the backyard.  Don exhaled a sigh of husbandly patience.  He folded the paper for easy access back to the comics once this trite, bothersome mystery was concluded and placed it alongside his coffee cup.  He walked to the sliding glass door and followed Linny’s gaze to the cat.

“Where?” he asked flatly.  “All I see is Oreo.”

“Over there near the fence.” Linny’s finger jabbed the direction.  She could be very impatient at times.

He looked again.  On a direct azimuth from the nose of the cat an odd creature shuffled along in the grass.  Don squinted and tried to focus. The thing was about thirty meters away, clearly limned against the base of the wooden fence at the rear of their yard, yet the silhouette did not convey any familiarity.  In fact, it was weird.  He slid the glass partition open to get a better look.  Linny put her hand on his shoulder and peered around him.  They stepped to the edge of the door, vainly attempting to identify the creature clambering through their backyard.

“My God. What on earth is that thing?” This time Linny whispered. Don wanted to provide a logical answer but nothing in his experience would provide it.

“Let me get closer and I’ll see,” was the best he could offer.  He really did not want to walk out toward the strange animal.  But in manly fashion he ginned courage over reluctance, bowed to the wishes of his wife, and stepped out of the house.

“Be careful.” Linny offered.  She did not see Don’s rolling eyes.

He slowly crossed the yard in the direction of the mystery, certain that at any moment his eye would report a familiar living shape; that he could turn to Linny and say “Oh it’s just a —-.”  No comforting revelation appeared, however, just a bizarre, fleshy shape groping along the ground close to the fence.  Oreo stayed prudently at his side. Cats do not take chances.  Don and his self centered companion advanced a few more steps.  There were behind and within ten feet of the thing when it stopped and hissed – an ugly, guttural, noise; a rasping, flesh prickling warning.  Certain sounds fill humans with quick terror: the buzz of a rattlesnake or the low, angry growl of an enraged dog.  It was that kind of sound.

Man and cat stopped at the instant. Before them, vicious and strange, was a loathsome enigma.

About the size of a small pig, it looked like it weighed forty or fifty pounds. In shape and posture it was toad like, but it had four very muscular arms, that jutted out at awkward angles. These stubby arms bent at the elbow and concluded in small, clawed hands.  Oily, faded yellow skin prickly with sparse black hair covered the beast. This bizarre morphology alone was sufficiently unnerving, yet it possessed a greatly more disturbing feature.  Solidly attached, to a squat hint of a neck, jutted a distinctly human head.

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This is an article I wrote some time ago in Afghanistan. You can read more about the fascinating wildlife of that country here:

Afghan-Arabia Wild

We have over here a long bodied, stout insect that the Afghans call “Ghou zam bour” the Cow Bee.  Named for its exceptional size this distinctive insect is actually a hornet  and is a common sight throughout the country.  I have photographed them from the very south of Afghanistan to the very north.  It must be a pretty hearty representative of the bee family.  I can personally attest to temperatures ranging from above 130 degrees Fahrenheit to well below zero.  At nearly one inch in length and body as stout as your little finger this is a member of the Hymenoptera family to reckon with.  But this is not a typical pollen gathering member of the tribe; there simply are not enough flowering plants in this country to support that lifestyle.  The Cow Bee has other strategies.

Since this article was written some time ago I received a very informative note from Louis Sorkin B.C.E., Entomologist and Arachnologist at the American Museum of Natural History in NY.  The “Cow Bee is actually an oriental hornet Vespa orientalis, a common hornet from the middle east, distributed from Africa to Pakistan / India and introduced in Madagascar.” You have to worry about their stings, not actually the bite.  Hornets can pack a powerful sting.”

Shortly after I heard from a fellow in Iran who actually was bitten by one.  As predicted it was terribly painful.  But this gentlemen was informed by his Iranian friends that the bite would ensure two years of good luck.   To date this claim is unverified!

Cow Bees do not build large paper like nests.  They prefer burrowing out a den in the side of a dirt mound but I’ve seen their burrows dug into the flat ground and in the cracks of old concrete buildings.  A crevice in the outer wall of a traditional Afghan mud home is a real favorite.  Although I cannot attest to seeing these guys actually dig the burrow I have seen them industriously going about home improvement by removing debris and adding to the outer walls of their home in the way of our North American Mud Daubers by mixing saliva with dirt.   The walls swirl out into unique shapes, but not all hives build them and some are content with very small ones.

Continue reading OBSERVATIONS ON THE AFGHAN “COW BEE”