ground bees
I grew up in a typical middle class, semi-rural neighborhood. As with most middle class neighborhoods, we had our fair share of hyjinx. I was recalling a few of those stories this morning that thought they might be fun to share.
Our closest neighbors right across the street were the McVetys. Our house and the McVetys both had very large yards which meant that a lot of the neighborhood activities were centered around our end of the street. The games of kick-the-can either we or the McVetys hosted were epic! This was assisted by the fact that the McVetys also had one of the biggest families in the neighborhood – 3 boys and 2 girls. (the youngest in particular I recollect, not only because he’s the only remaining resident in the neighborhood having taken over the old homestead when his parents retired, but because he is the only one for whom I know his full legal name, as well as the full names of the rest of the children. In fact everyone in the neighborhood knew their full names, because – as with most middle class neighborhood families – his mom would yell the full name any time she was perturbed ”{first name} {middle name} McVETY – GET OVER HERE!!”
During one of the epic kick the can games that would extend from our 2 acres over through the McVety’s 3 acres and occasionally encompassing yards of the adjacent houses, most all of the McVety family and half the kids in the rest of the neighborhood were taking part. I forget who was “it”, but can always remember the mantra. Count to 200 by 5′s!
We had that mantra down to where we could roll it off in our sleep. And played so often, we probably did. “Five-ten-fifteen-twenty-twentyfive-thirty….” It would be come a blur of mush in our mouths as we tried to roll it off before everyone could find their respective trees or bushes or old boats in the long grass. There was also a small creek that wrapped itself around the entire neighborhood. Although creek is being gracious. Yeah the water flowed and if you stood there long enough watching it, you could satisfy yourself of that fact, but it was mostly an 8′ wide trench of mud with a little standing water on top of it.
As the ‘crick’ passed our house, it was mostly at ground level, but next to the McVety’s there was about a 4′ bank. A great place to hide for kick the can. Apparently the McVety boys knew this better than I did, seeing as how it was their property and all, so when I picked a spot along that bank to hide, I soon discovered the oldest of the boys had the same idea in mind.
He told me to move or find another spot. I like to believe I moved over out of respect for it being his property, but it’s more likely that I did so because he was much bigger than me. As I moved, however, my foot slipped down into the water making a splash. I tried to correct my footing and made another small splash. I didn’t think much of it at the time and eventually found a good footing.
I didn’t think that much of it at all until I heard the humming and saw the look on the McVety boy’s face. The look was so perplexing I hadn’t even noticed the humming increase and was only mildly aware of the things landing in my hair and finding their way into my shirt and alighting on my bare skin. Jerry took off like a shot. Apparently his few years of age on me gave him more common sense when combined with the fact he was closer to the way out of the hiding hole as a result of telling me to move over. The manner in which he shot out so quickly also perplexed me and held my attention – but not for long.
‘Ow, ow ow ow – OUCH!’
I soon found I didn’t need to think about it too much either and found myself running after Jerry, but I wasn’t quite sure I knew where I was going. Jerry ran in his house, but I couldn’t rightly do that since I didn’t live there. So instead I started heading toward my house, becoming more aware of the clear and present situation: Bees!!! Upon realizing this, I slowed down to swat, slap and pick at the dozens of the buggers now stinging me all over the place!
It wasn’t too long and Mrs. McVety came bounding out of the house with a fly swatter. By this point in time, I had become aware that I was making quite a ruckus (screaming and crying as kids of that age could be expected to do) as a result of the whole affair. It was about this time that Mrs. McVety caught up with me and was trying as daintily as possible to swat at the bees on my skin with her fly swatter. Unfortunately for her, it was also about this time that my dad became aware of a kid wailing in pain somewhere out in front of the house.
So imagine this scenario as a parent: You are trying to enjoy a weekend off from work, sitting in the living room and you finally got the kids out of the house to get some ‘me‘ time. You’re just settling in to relax in front of the TV when you hear a kid crying. You head to the front door only to learn the horror of horrors – it’s your kid!!!!! and the crying is getting progressively worse….. and then you notice that some woman is standing by your kid – HITTING HIM WITH A FLYSWATTER!!!
My dad turned into a raging bull, he flung the screen door open and charged leaving a trail of uprooted grass and dust in his wake. Mrs. McVety looked up just long enough from her swatting to try to determine the source of this coming maelstrom only to see the beat red face of Mr. Wood barreling down upon her! A moments hesitation of ‘oh crap’ mental dynamics ran through her head as she groped for the right thing to say to immediately clarify the situation.
“*uhhh uhhhh*…. BEEES. BEES BEES BEES!!!“
24 of the little buggers to be precise. I got to enjoy a few days of epsom salt baths and laying in bed with little dots of baking soda speckled across my body. Good times!
(originally posted to facebook)
As an addendum to this, 5 years later I was burning some brush in the back corner of the yard when, after lighting the fire, I discovered there was a ground bee’s nest near the back and the flames were getting them quite agitated. Mind you, when I was stung by the original 24, I had typical ouchies and pain, but no reactions. These appeared to be the same type of bee.
Being a dumb teenager, I got this genius idea to take the hose I had on hand to spray down the pile if it started to flame up to high, and instead shove the end of it down the bee hive to ‘drown’ them out before the fire completely pissed them all off.
After shoving the hose down the hole, I ran back a good 30′ or so to watch the mayhem that resulted. It was shortly after I got back there that I learned the meaning of the word ‘bee-line’.
While watching the bees, I happened to notice a single one fly straight up in the air. I don’t know if it was the line of the hose that led to my hand or just that I was the only out-of-the-ordinary object in the neighborhood of the hive, but he spun around slowly then upon seeing me, sent full balls-out straight at me, landing on my hand.
The whole thing happened so fast, I just stood there like an idiot watching as this bee drove his stinger down into the knuckle on my left thumb. Finally it occurred to me “this hurts” and then “why are you standing here like an idiot??” so I dropped the hose and beat the bee off, then pulled out the stinger and tried to squeeze out whatever I could of the poison before running into the house to put baking soda and calamine on it.
By the time I got back outside, the flames took out most of the swarming bees and I was again able to attend to the fire. But my hand still hurt and my knuckle started to swell.
Over the period of the next 3 days, the swelling moved slowly down my thumb, across the adjacent three fingers out to the first knuckle of each and up my wrist about 3″. By the time we finally decided it was getting worse and not better, my hand looked like I had on one of those small speed bag punching gloves. They hooked me up with an adrenaline shot and a 6 day kit of cortosteroid pills as well as some heavy duty benydril and it eventually subsided.
When my mom wrote her mother about it (as she had the prior time detailed in this story), Gramma pulled out her diary. Turns out I got bit by that second one 5 years to the day after the first attack of the 24 stings.