Remembering the sting

Today I posted the follow on Facebook:

I had just finished some sprinkler work this afternoon and was putting things away when I was attacked by a swarm of wasps. Luckily I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, but two made it through, stinging me, one on each arm. I yelled for my daughter to get in the house and stormed into the garage. There I found several more walking in circles because their stingers were stuck in my shirt. I beat them to their respective pulps with my leather hat and a roll of packing tape then scraped by arms with a tape measure to clear the two stingers. I went inside to check on my daughter and took her into the bathroom to show her what stings look like. There another wasp (from my leg?) made an appearance. I shooed by daughter out and shut the door. We battled to his death and I flushed his broken body down the toilet. Twenty minutes later I was downstairs and pulled something out of my pocket and another wasp came with it. Again, we battled around the room. At last I pinned him between a towel and a pillow and I punched him to death against the wall. His body too was flushed down the toilet. When my son wakes up from his nap I am going to get a wasp trap and spray. This cowardly attack against my family will not go unpunished! I've felt the sting of wasps before and do not fear it! Cower before me, you who wear the colors of yellow and black for your day has come!!

I'm not normally this adamant against wasps. In fact I'm normally quite calm and collected. This in no way means that I like them or even tolerate them much, but rather that if they don't bother me, I don't bother them. In fact, the nest that houses this particular swam is built into my shed and I've not done anything about it because it wasn't a problem - until now that is.

I've always been under the belief that if you act calm and cool around bees and wasps that they will leave you alone. This has been my experience before. While serving a religious service mission in Russia my partner and I were helping straighten metal fence posts when we disturbed a hive of wasps. Munoz, my partner, took off running before I even realized that I was surrounded by wasps. He screamed at me, "ASA!" when I didn't understand he switched to English. "BEEEEEEZZZZZZZS!!!!!" I still chuckle about his reaction as I looked up, said, "Oh" and calming walked towards him away from the nest in the post. Granted, that is not always the case. I found out that bumble bees with quite literally bite you when I was weeding a flowerbed and happened to be next to the bumbler's hole. I ignored him for a bit figuring that he was brushing against my ear but that changed when I felt a very distinct chomp. The wound actually bled and was there for two weeks. Not fun.

I like to think that my reaction to bees and wasps is due to desensitization because of a particular, rather traumatic episode when I was about seven or eight. Muscles, one of her friends, and I had just returned from swimming somewhere when we noticed that our neighbor's horses were up by our back fence. We grabbed a bag of carrots from the fridge and ran out to feed them. I was still wearing my eighties bathing suit (short shorts) and I think I still had my towel. We fed the horses for a bit and then I remember screaming and running for the house. My mother was standing there in the open doorway and she just let me barrel on through the dining room into the living room where I smashed into the couch and saw what was attacking me. A wasp fell out of my hair and landed on the couch right in front of my face. I remember screaming even loader (a feat that I'm sure surprised my mother). She mushed it with a dish towel and I felt her swatting the towel all over my body as I crouched there and sobbed. I remember saying a prayer and then I remember paramedics checking me over. I was fine. My sister and her friend looked to be in worse shape and they had only been stung a half dozen times compared to my full body acupuncture session. We figure that I had stepped on a hive that the wasps had built in the irrigation ditch behind our house.

Since then, I've mentally told myself, "I've been stung a whole lot. There isn't much fear for me now." With that said, when I saw the wasps stuck to my clothes I was quite irate and there was some shock akin to that time the wasp fell out of my hair onto the couch. But otherwise when I was stung today I wasn't afraid of the stings, I was really made. Livid might be a good word as well. Indignant may be the best one yet. I had kept my side of the bargain  I didn't disturb them and they attacked me! It wasn't until after I got in the house that I remember about that particular nest and then remembered that in my cleaning up from sprinkler work I did in fact send some major vibrations through the floor of the shed. So, it turns out I did disturb them. However, when you have small children who like to play in the back yard it is better that you get stung twice and get the drive to remove the nest than your kids suffer for your hands off approach. The traps been hung and I've got two new cans of wasp killer. Nobody messes with my family. The trick will be getting to the nest and doing so when they least expect it.....