A rumination on flies and hornets
Apr. 29th, 2011 04:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonvincentMy years of living in the country and dealing with insects taught me the following.
A biting fly hurts when it bites, but it doesn't have any worse weapons, so it will fly away from the least sign of a swat. Unlike the fly, a hornet will sit there when someone approaches it with a flyswatter, because it will sting instead of fleeing. Consequently, a well-aimed swat will always catch the hornet, while a fly might still escape.
This lesson can be applied to people as well. If you encounter an opponent that's like a fly, you'll have to be quiet, swift, and lucky to hit them, as they're primed to evade. On the other hand, if you run into an opponent who is like a hornet, you all it takes is a solid swat, preferably with a large foreign object, such as a book, to find its target, as the hornet won't budge.
A biting fly hurts when it bites, but it doesn't have any worse weapons, so it will fly away from the least sign of a swat. Unlike the fly, a hornet will sit there when someone approaches it with a flyswatter, because it will sting instead of fleeing. Consequently, a well-aimed swat will always catch the hornet, while a fly might still escape.
This lesson can be applied to people as well. If you encounter an opponent that's like a fly, you'll have to be quiet, swift, and lucky to hit them, as they're primed to evade. On the other hand, if you run into an opponent who is like a hornet, you all it takes is a solid swat, preferably with a large foreign object, such as a book, to find its target, as the hornet won't budge.
