Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasp.
    Our experiments with the wasps have taught
us quite a bit about the junction of soul and body. The human soul
is only as important as the physical body it lives within. The
physical body can easily survive without the soul, but the soul
cannot find peace until the physical body is at rest.
    I could go on and on. Souls are fascinating
to shamans. In the last four years, I’ve learned more about souls
than I did in the twenty-plus years studying the shaman path. I’ll
put souls on my list of things to talk about.
    This entry was supposed to be about wasps --
what they are like, what they eat, how they are dangerous, and how
to kill them. Back to the task at hand.
    After the initial transformation, wasps tend
to be more aggressive and hostile. It’s almost as if they are angry
for their transformation and they want you to do something to fix
it. Or want me to do something to fix it. They bite, kick, punch,
and scream.
    George is impervious to their bite. We have
seen people turn to wasps after being bitten, but, at least here,
it’s fairly rare. According to everything I read before the
Internet went down, direct blood-to-blood interaction turns on The
146 in those who aren’t making The 146-protein. In those who are
already making the protein, the replication goes into overdrive, as
if it’s competing with The 146 in the saliva of the biter. People
convert quickly.
    I believe that we had such a massive
conversion here because the Pen housed so many hard cases -- people
who’d spent most of their lives in prison eating The 146-modified
food and getting 146 vaccines. For the first couple of years or so,
George and I spent all day, every day, killing wasps. It’s hard to
believe, but it’s been more than a year since we’ve even seen a
wasp.
    While movies play up the fact that wasps can
infect you, the true danger of the wasp is their violence. Granted,
we’ve just studied ex-prisoners at New Mexico’s most violent
prison. Still, wasps seem to love to kill. Because they eat only
living tissue, death comes to their food late. They kill a lot more
people than they eat. They kill for the sport of it or even kill
because they are bored. The amount that they kill is one of the
least human things about them.
    We haven’t seen a wasp use an implement --
knife, gun, shovel, etc. We tried to train them to use tools, but
most of our training was ineffective. We were able to get them to
take up the asphalt and cement in the exercise yard. The wasps
mostly did that with their bare hands as a way to vent their
violence and boredom.
    Probably the most important thing we’ve
learned is how to kill a wasp. In movies, the standard line is:
“Remove the head or destroy the brain.”
    That only sort of works. The 146-protein has
already destroyed the wasp’s brain. When we had a lot wasps around,
we did a few autopsies. Their frontal lobes are like gelatin with
the consistency of oatmeal. The only portion of the brain that’s
functioning is the back of the head and the deep recesses of the
brain. Wasps can see and have reptilian drives.
    Bashing it in the forehead doesn’t affect
the wasp at all. You can’t kill a wasp by destroying his or her
brain. It’s already destroyed.
    Removing the head works. BUT, you must
separate the head from the body and keep it separated. You should
have seen George’s face the time we chopped off the head and then
tried to bury them together. To our horror, the body reanimated
when its head came close. George picked up the head like a
basketball and hurled it toward the rusted basketball hoops. He
laughed when the head went through the rim.
    As an aside -- one of the joys of my life
now is making George laugh. He still has that hearty belly laugh.
His laugh reminds me of a time when things were normal, when we
didn’t live in hell. George is a good friend to have.
    We’ve found that the most human way to
dispatch a wasp is to:
Remove the head;
Light the body on fire;
Bury the