Experiencing a Grand Punisher and its fallout

Photo of Polistes exclaiming in the nest

One day last summer (2021), I was on my back porch. I lifted a tarp that I keep over my cupboards so I could close the door, which I thoughtlessly did dozens of times. A wasp flew out from under the tarp at lightning speed and stung my hand so hard and painfully it felt like a blow. For a moment I didn’t know what had happened, but my hand was hurting badly and I realized that a biting insect had grabbed me and there were more.

I screamed and ran back into my house, frantically scanning to make sure no wasps had come through the door with me. I slammed the storm door and the wooden door inside. But the wooden door does not lock completely in the summer and would not stay closed. I needed to get away from this wasp and his co-workers so badly that I leaned on the wooden door with all my weight for an awkward amount of time, in case a wasp got between the doors. I am slowly recovering from my fear. My hand was throbbing and starting to swell.

A new experience

I have always got along very well with biting insects. I am a gardener and I really like bees and wasps in the yard. I have been very close to paper wasps on my porch before, in many situations. I always felt friendly towards these creatures and never panicked when they buzzed around me. When I sit on the steps of my veranda, I sometimes hear wasps gnawing at the cardboard I have stapled to it. You can tell how close I was when I made this cute video of another paper wasp species to capture the nibbling noises.

I’ve had a few bites in my life. I was stung by bees several times as a child when I accidentally stepped on them. I was bitten three times by yellow vests as an adult, but they weren’t bad bites. In each case, they felt like “warning” stings, as if they weren’t at full strength. These bites did not swell much and were gone within a day.

It was different.

The surprise factor

The sting was painful. But the shock was worse. I’ve written before about my experience of drinking a big gulp of sour milk when I was a kid. The experience was a disgusting shock, partly because I didn’t understand what was going on. I was young; I didn’t even know milk could turn sour. This intense experience changed my behavior for life.

The wasp sting was equally shocking. There was a feeling of disorientation that accompanied the pain. A moment of pure physical response, as I was confused about what had happened, only knowing that I was somehow attacked.

Now I know that the wasps had defended their nest, which was under the tarp. But at the time my body only knew how to run.

Behaviour change

I received an aversive stimulus from the environment. For more experienced people, a wasp sting can be a normal day, minor irritation. But for me, the sting and the shock were of great magnitude. My behavior has changed.

I was curious to see how widespread and long-lasting the effects were, so I followed.

I’ve written about the fallout from using aversives, and that includes that fear and avoidance can become attached to location and other things in the environment in addition to what hurts us directly. This is one of the many risks of using aversives in animal training. Did this generalization happen to me? You bet, even with my human cognition and the fact that I was analyzing the experience.

This single event caused fear conditioning, punished many of my behaviors and negatively reinforced even more.

Changes in Respondents’ Emotions and Behaviors

Here is the behavior of the respondents and the emotional changes that I am aware of.

• The sound and sight of a wasp was followed by pain, so I underwent responder fear conditioning.
• After that, I experienced what is called a startle reflex potentiated by fear. I jumped when I heard a buzz or when I saw an insect flying towards me. This response was reinforced when I was in the area where the sting occurred. Previously, these stimuli would only have elicited caution.
• I kept a bad feeling about the tarp.

Behaviors punished

Punishment, even by a strong aversive stimulus, does not always last forever. These behaviors stopped for several days, then gradually returned to my repertoire after I got rid of the wasps (see reinforcement section below). Even then, most behaviors were still less frequent for quite a while.

• I stopped moving the tarp. At some point I would have to, but it would probably take me a long time before I thoughtlessly raised my hand to move it. This behavior was punished.
• I stopped going out the back door and I stopped hanging out on my back porch.
• I didn’t use any of the tools in my cabinet, even though the door was open. Putting your hand in the cabinet was punished. The wasps could be there too!
• I didn’t close the wardrobe door because I would have had to move the tarp.

Negatively reinforced behaviors

The first three of these behaviors were escape behaviors; the others were avoidance behaviors. All reinforced negatively.

• I fled the wasps.
• I closed the door between them and me.
• I leaned over the door and looked inside the house for wasps.
• The first few days, if I had to go into the back yard, I would walk out the front door and then through the side door.
• I did the same for the dogs.
• I was hypervigilant outdoors and frequently scanned for wasps.
• When I ventured out the back door, I closed it softly and walked around the other side of the porch. These wasps were on the defensive, not out to get me, but I didn’t know where their nest was or if there was more than one.
• I hired an exterminator. I hated doing that. I’ve had a lifetime of experience getting along very well with these little creatures, and I try to treat these little lives with respect. I hated killing a bunch of them because they built their house in the wrong place. But I needed to use my tools and close the cabinet door and keep my dogs safe.
• Well after the arrival of the exterminator, I gently removed the tarp from the cupboards. The wasps could no longer live there out of my sight!
• I laid the tarp on the grass to “bake” it in the heat for a few days, then rinsed it with water before drying it and storing it.
• I googled a bit because I got a great localized response to the sting. My whole hand swelled up over the course of about four days and stayed that way for another three days. I discovered that my large localized response could mean that I would be more likely to have a systemic response (anaphylaxis) if I was stung in the future. This made me redouble both my reasonable and exaggerated precautions.

Consequences

It is now a year later. Most of my behaviors that were punished have returned to baseline, and I have some last vestiges of avoidance behaviors.

Until recently, there was little vigilance left; I was no longer jaded about the wasps, but the fear and avoidance had diminished. I’m more careful than before when they fly around me, but that’s about it. This lifetime of good, neutral experiences with biting insects buried most of the fear.

Then it happened. One day last week, I went to the back door, opened it, and a yellow paper wasp came in and lit up inside the door as I closed it. But I didn’t jump or panic. My old self from before the sting was back in control, even though I was in the situation I had tried so hard to avoid before: a wasp was in the house with me.

But it was a situation I had faced many times in the past. I kept an eye out for the wasp and slowly opened the door. The wasp stood still for a while, then started to wander around the door a bit. Then it took off and flew in the right direction (the porch). It spun very fast, then flew away. I didn’t jump or flinch.

I thought about my changes in behavior and how things had returned to normal when the metal chain on the key to the lock caught the light as it swung. I surprised! The proximity of the wasp had again awakened this reaction. The quick flash in my peripheral vision was similar enough to the flash of a fast moving insect for the reflex to fire.

I’m a bit out of my depth to make generalizations, but I think it’s fascinating that my operant responses are mostly back to where they were before, but the automatic respondent behaviors were waiting there to get back to the stock. Thank you, sympathetic nervous system, for remembering and working to keep me safe. Thank you also for reminding me of the persistence of the fear response.

Copyright 2022 Eileen Anderson

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Photo credits: The wasp illustration is a CanStock photo. The linked wasp photograph is a public domain image by Alex Wild via Wikimedia Commons. Photos of cabinet, hands and key ring are copyrighted by Eileen Anderson.