Playing with Bees

You would think I would have learned my lesson in high school when on two different occassions I was stung on my face by bees. Both stings resulted in ginormous swollen lips. The first sting resulted from playing with a bee's nest during cross country practice freshman year. After pulling out a stick that a teammate had shoved in it so that my dad/coach wouldn't see that we had disobeyed him, they swarmed me. One caught my lower lip. I was going to hide it from my dad until it became so large that that was impossible. Amazingly, though, I ran a fantastic race the next day. I wonder if bee stings are a form of doping? Anyway, the second one wasn't my fault. I was just running down the bike path by Autzen Stadium and out of nowhere, a bee flew into my upper lip. Lucky me, team pictures were the next day.

Take that into account as I tell you about my day.

I was sitting in the office working away when Don Armando rushed in and frantically started telling me about bees and cows and dogs. I was lost and asked him what he wanted me to do. Since I am "la encargada de medio ambiente" (the one in charge of the environment), he wanted me to come see the bees that had attacked these animals to determine what species it was. I told him that I'm not a bee expert. He told me to come anyway, that maybe I could help. Might as well, I thought, it'll get me out of the office.

We hopped into the truck and drove up the mountain. Along the way we picked up a semi-hysterical girl who had been stung by the bees. Once we got to the house it was clear to me that I was of no help. There were bees everywhere; the owner of the house had a least a dozen swarming around his head. The men went at the bees with brooms, buckets of water and Raid. I got out for awhile but then thought better of it and went to wait in the truck.

Supposedly one dog had already died from all the stings and the cow was in pretty bad shape after being stung by "thousands." The men walked the cow down the hill and dumped water on her. Intrigued, I cautiously opened my window and watched at a safe distance... or so I thought. Ten minutes passed by uneventully sitting there reading my book. Then BAM. A bee flew in fast, straight to my face and stung me in the cheek. I just laughed at myself. When will I ever learn? Not even solely with respect to bees, I just like to put myself in dangerous situations. That's what adventure is though, right?

Luckily my face didn't swell up this time, although it could be a great look to fend off creepsters that like to whistle at me.