Gone Fishin'

Will be back Shortly.

Killer Bees....

As I sit here, I am feeling sore all over, my pinkie finger, my back, my hip, my upper arm. And, it wasn’t even my fault. I came home from work and my plan for the afternoon was to mow the lawn. I stopped at the gas station and filled up the tank and got some additional fuel for the ride on mower. After lunch, I topped up the mower tank and headed out to do some relaxing mowing. All was going so well....until...

Until, all of a sudden my aura of relaxation from the sound of the mower is broken when I suddenly feel something bite my pinkie....and hard. Then I felt one bite my hip and then my back, and my arm. I start to literally freak out as the sudden realization has just surfaced that I have in fact hit a yellow jacket’s nest in the ground. So as I am desperately trying to put the mower in park while being attacked by these bastards, and my freaking out is not helping the situation. I panic and I can’t remember how to shut the damn thing off. I can’t get it to stop moving forward and I now have driven the mower off into the runoff drainage and it is halfway in the weeds. I finally get the darn thing to stop and I start running away leaving the mower where it was and screaming like a lunatic back to the house waving my hands around. All I can hear is a muffled scream because I have my ear plugs in so to me I figure I am just quietly making a scene. However, the few cars that passed by looked at me strangely so I think I may have been yelling a bit louder than I thought. I try the front door. Why the heck did I lock it? I rush to the garage and press the code. I run inside and I’m now freaking out screaming from the pain, throwing my hat off and simultaneously ripping my shirt over my head with my sunglasses falling to the floor. My husband comes running down when he hears me now in his own state of panic thinking that I have chopped my foot off with the blades or something. I am hysterically trying to explain to him what happened. We assess the damage. He gets the tweezers and pulls out a stinger that is still sticking out of my arm for some reason. He is trying to calm me down because I am now shaking. He sits me down and notices that three yellow jackets have somehow followed me in the house likely stowing away somewhere on my clothing. He tells me to remain calm while he tries to kill them. He hands me the laptop to do a search on the best way to treat these stings as a way to take my mind off the pain. Oh Gawd, the pain. And now the swelling. I do a search. It says use ice. I try it, and it does not help. It is only making me cold and I have so many bites I can’t decide which one to ice. I keep reading. They say that WD-40 works wonders on the pain and swelling. He grabs a can from the garage. I try that. It doesn’t do squat. So now I won’t squeak so loud next time I start my screaming I suppose, but as to the alleviation of the pain...NADA. I sit down a for a bit and try to take my mind off the incident surfing the net trying to find out what I should do next. Do I need hospital care? Am I allergic, and will I die from the stings?

After calming down for a bit, I realize that I have only mowed half of my grass and still have half to do. That really irked me and I am thinking that I just can’t leave it like that. Damn those bees. So I decided okay, well, they were on the front side lawn, I can still go finish up the back yard and the other side. So I tell my husband, I really want to go finish the rest and I am feeling somewhat a little better after taking the Advil. He tells me okay, but be careful.

So I head out and finish up the back and the other side. Now, I have the last side to finish up where the bees attacked and it’s only a little bit to finish at that. And, that’s when, I got cocky. I figured, well, I know exactly where the nest is now and the spot I need to finish is at least 15 feet away from that. They won’t bother me if I don’t bother them right? Wrong. So I start mowing it. But this time, I was clever and instead of mowing long ways the way I was before when I ran into them, I will go up and back the lawn the other way and stop short enough from where they were. In my head, this seemed completely reasonable and I had a job to complete. I could not rest until it was done. Plus, I was rather proud of myself for my cleverly ingenious plan on how to avoid these stinging creatures and still finish my interrupted mowing. In hindsight, this was NOT a good idea.

I started running the mower up and down and out of my peripheral, I see something fly by my head. Don’t be paranoid, I tell myself, it’s probably just a kicked up piece of grass or a twig. That’s when it happened. They started swarming me again. Where they came from, I don't know. Holy Shite. Frak, Frak, Frak. Not Again! Now if you know me, you know I rarely cuss. This time, the latent trucker in me came out in full force. I was trying to steer the mower and I could feel them on me. I started to freak out. I shot my hands up to swat at them and in the process threw my favorite sunglasses on the ground. I was just hoping that I didn’t run them over with the mower while I made my getaway, but there was no way in hell I was going to stop to get them NOW. I wasn’t moving fast enough to get away though so I lifted the cutting blade up thinking that will make the mower speed up. I am literally trying to shimmy the mower forward shaking the steering wheel and scooting forward on the seat like somehow that is going to get me back to the house faster. Panic makes a person do stupid things. Trust me on this. I actually contemplated abandoning the mower in the middle of the street, getting off and just running fast as I could. At this moment, I am on the verge of hysteria in my 2nd brush with crazed panic of the day. I am driving the mower at full speed with my eyes closed and my hands covering my face because I just read that facial stings are the most dangerous. And, I am using the kind of profanity that would make Powdergirl proud. I am praying no cars are flying down the street like they usually do. FYI, yellow jackets can fly faster than a mower. I probably should have just run. I must have looked so ridiculous to any neighbor who may have been witness to this fiasco. I can only imagine it coming off like some slapstick scene from a Mr. Bean film. And, I can laugh about it today, but at that moment...it was my worst nightmare. I somehow made it back to the house finally in my useless getaway mower. Those little frackers keep chasing me and I could hear them buzzing by my ears. They did not stop even when I left their area. What the hell is up with that?

They followed me. I ran into the garage and looked down. There was one on my sneaker. I take my other foot and smash the bee on my shoe in an effort to kill him and kept smashing him over and over in a panic even though I knew he was probably dead. In hindsight, crushing your own foot to rid yourself of a bug is not the best laid plan but, at least I killed him. I rushed into the house screaming like a nut again. But, by this time I have lost it and have broken down in tears. Chris comes running in and I explain to him through my sniveling panic that I got cocky and went back to finish up the other side of the lawn that I promised I'd stay away from. And they attacked me once again! Right then, I think I feel something in my jeans. Holy Mother of .....Shite!!! I rip off my jeans and t-shirt and don’t you know, there was another one. He was IN MY JEANS!! My husband grabbed the swatter and smashed the crap out of him once he got a clear shot. My hero!

Now, it’s a day later. I am still sore, I have large red rashes where I was bitten and my finger is still swollen. And to top it off, the bites are now itchy too. The kind of itchy that you can’t get to. That creepy crawly under the skin feeling that does not respond to traditional scratching. Thank you pharmaceutical companies for the invention of Benadryl.

I used to feel safe in my home and my yard. It was my happy place. Now if I see anything fly by me, I can feel the panic rise in my chest. It’s a sucky feeling. Mowing will never be the same again for me and I used to love doing it. Damn yellow jackets. I will never make fun of someone again when they run away from a bee. I can’t wait to sick the killer bug spray on their nest to exact my ultimate “bugacidal” revenge. Those bees are going to pay for what they’ve done. Usually, I say live and let live. Until you mess with me. Then all bets are off. I am going to take great pride in exterminating their whole tribe.