Tom Franklin stopped by to direct my attention to an old stump in the yard. There was part of a snakeskin in it. Tom had retrieved most of the snakeskin yesterday, as a curiosity for his daughter. But the main thing Tom wanted to show me was a yellow jacket nest next to the stump. He had been crossing our yard yesterday to swim in the neighbor's pool when he noticed both the snakeskin and the nest. Tom gave me several tips on how to deal with the yellow jackets, and also wished to clear the record on wasps and the nature of evil. Stephen Jay Gould, said Tom, had been writing about a specific kind of wasp in the essay to which Tom had referred during our recent conversation on the subject. Tom did not mean to paint all wasps with the same broad brush!
