The Brown Wasps by Loren Eiseley

The Brown Wasps by Loren Eiseley shows that humans and animals act in some similar ways. He says that humans and animals cling to the things they know very strongly. Sometimes they even act as if nothing even changed. Humans and animals tend to want to return to things that are familiar to them, as they grow older. Eiseley shows how humans and animals try to cling or recreate an important or favorite place. Some examples are the old men, the brown wasps, the mice, the pigeons, the blind man, and even Eiseley.

Eiseley recalls his boyhood home in Nebraska. He recalls how the train stations used to be. In addition, he remembers how all the pigeons would fly around and how all the waiting people boarding the trains would feed them. He realizes he is getting older and older everyday. He once grew a tree with his father and he acts like it's been there the whole time. Sixty years later he realizes that the tree that he had been imagining his whole l

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One of the mice lives in one of the author's potted plants. They both just cannot let their favorite place go. The old men knew that the train stations were being torn down, but they refused to give it up. The author relates how the mouse tried to cling to something familiar and recreate a place just as the old men did. Therefore, they try to cling to that place or at least they try to recreate it. They are trying to cling to their favorite place to stay. He loved his home, but he no longer has it so he has to try to recreate it in the plant.

Eiseley remembers how the brown wasps kept circling around the old nests that had been abandoned. They just keep flying and get hungrier by the minute. The mouse attempts to recreate his home in one of the author's plant. They even watched people who jingled change in their hands and prospected for food under the feet of people.

The old men at the train stations sleep there to stay out of the rain even though they are no longer going to work.