In The Bushes.....Face to Face With A Japanese Killer Hornet

Flasback from my first year to Taiji, Japan. One of the younger generation of dolphin killers was giving me a tour of Taiji. He took me to a hiking spot which surrounds the coast line. As we walked through a trail....he grabbed me and stopped abruptly....as we backed up slowly...he was eyeing what looked to me like a Bumble Bee..told me that he thought this was a  "Killer Bee".....

Fast Forward to my recent trip to Taiji.
While hiding in the bushes videoing, felt something buzzing around me.  Put my camera down and what I thought was a huge Bumble Bee moved directly in front of my face.  It's long transparent-like wings beating furiously, keeping it stationary like a humming bird, looking straight into my eyes. Because i was in hiding from the fishermen searching for anyone in the bushes, I could not give into my fear....which was to JUMP UP...and run out of the bushes Screaming!  Instead, I was forced to lie " tete a tete" with this "strange Bee" looking deep into my eyes..After what seemed like an Eternity...it shot up and disappeared. and I resumed filming.....shortly after that, a strange wind blew through the bushes and over the water. And then sthg happened, the wind blew the tarps up which the fishermen use to hide the slaughter....and that is when i filmed some of the horror with my blurry camera.

On returning home, googled  "killer bees" in Japan and discovered that the fisherman had meant "killer hornets". There is a hornet in Japan which has a powerful deadly venom which they spray into the eyes of their victims. Which would explain why the hornet idled at my eyes...feel lucky...very lucky!

From the Internet on Japanese Killer Hornets: * I did not write the following:  
Why you must fear it:
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because goddamn, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the goddamned place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.

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