I was just outside, sipping coffee, working a crossword, and getting ready to go for a drive. The neighbors were arguing about their sycamore trees. We had sprayed malathion last night and there were a number of dead bugs on the ground. Including a large brown roach, of the kind that live in our sweetgum tree, that swarm down the trunks of said tree at night, the kind that fly and grow about an inch to two inches long. It looked like a matchbox Studebaker that had been junked.

I was standing up as a yellow-jacket flew up, landed, hopped around the corpse as if sizing it up, and then approached the dead roach from the rear. It propped up one wing, then the other as if they were engine hoods. Then, one leg, another, four all together were pushed outward from the body of the roach by the wasp. It was methodical. I paused, wondering if there would be a tiny revving sound as the roach sputtered back to life.

Then the wasp began to eat or chop up the roach's softer parts. I could hear it. It was a softer version of the sound those soft, blue catepillars make when they attack the live oaks en masse every spring.