Bugs bugs bugs! See this little bugger? That guy up there? Three just like him stung the Oldest today in an episode never to be forgotten by any of us. What is the deal with us and things that fly? Or just bugs in general? And why oh why do I have such huge fear of bugs in the first place? Oh wait, that I can partly thank my sister Minnerific (obviously an alias) for. Yes when we were little and despite the fact that she was YOUNGER than me, she used to torture me with both live and dead bugs. Flash forward to now and it's all I can do to not impart that same fear to my sons. Yeah, good LUCK with that. Um, but I digress..... so today, yes back to today...
The Oldest and his cousins were outside running, getting into innocent trouble that kids can get into like, chasing girls, throwing water balloons at them and running amok in and out of the trees and bushes when they happened upon what clearly turned out to be a nest of yellow jackets. My son who was the youngest in the group didn't know what hit him till it stung him so to speak. I saw them all running and I kid you not, it was like out of a cartoon or a slow motion movie, imagine this, all the boys running, flailing their arms dramatically and yelling what I could not understand but later turned out to be "Run! Bees!" and there last in the pack was my darling, mortified of bugs in real life but loves to read and learn about them, son; crying and running towards me. His words are illogical. He's crying, clearly he is and you all know by now I cannot take this crying especially if I do not know what the crying has originated from. So I get stern with him, tell him to stop crying and talk to me. What in the world happened? And he's holding his head and then he's crying again. I look at his head, frantically, and see nothing. Tell him to stop crying again. He's in control for a second or two, I look again and then I see it. It's a yellow jacket literally buried in his head. I only see the torso in the shape of an arc. In other words, the head and the tail are pushed into his head. He is angry and obviously stinging him while I'm looking at it. What do I do? Hah! Again with the slow motion, I look up and see my honey walking towards us and I, the oh so very loving mother that I am, I push my child to him, I do not get the yellow jacket myself, I push my child to his big strong daddy and I say, "GET THE BEE OUT OF HIS HAIR IT'S STINGING HIM!!!"
More crying, more drama, we get him in the house and there are people in the kitchen (it's a party BTW) and suddenly where there was a calm Oldest, there is now an angry and re crying Oldest. He's stomping his feet and dancing about and pointing to his pants and I realize, I suddenly realize that there is another one in his pants. We rip his shirt off him, he's completely upset at this point and I'm feeling for him now, I'm feeling horrible, we pull his shorts off, and I tell his big strong daddy to take him in the bathroom suddenly acutely aware of four thousand eyes on us and oh yeah, the Oldest' almost fully naked body in the middle of my sister in laws kitchen.
"Get him in the bathroom!!" I'm sure I commanded in my best I'm in control voice (and I so was not in control of anything as per the norm).
My husband takes him in there, my sister in law, my sweet sister in law goes in there too. I think two of them did. Guess what? They found two in his shorts, they had been stinging him. He got stung once on the back of each leg. Plus one got loose and was in the window of the bathroom. Poor thing. Poor poor thing. He was trying to be brave and as I was watching him, the more he was getting stung, he was getting so angry.
AND the other boys? One of his cousins got stung on the side; it drew blood. Blech. The other cousin got nothing. The friend of his cousin, he got stung on the neck. Clearly in their travels in the trees and little woods area, they upset nature a little bit and messed with the wrong dudes. And you know, once they sense fear, you're done. You can run as fast as you'd like, your basically cooked. May as well stop running.
As I talked with the Oldest before bedtime, he said to me, "Mom I don't think I'll ever ever forget what happened today" and I'm thinking, yep, we're all done here. Remember this fear?
Yep, we're done. So I quizzed him.
"Oldest, what will you do if you ever see a bee again?"
"Be brave and ignore him" Bah hah hah! Right. I WISH. But he won't. And I probably won't either. We've seen too much this summer. Big ole' bugs and ones that sting you. No fun.
And what was the Littlest doing all this time? Running around completely oblivious until he realized his big brother was 'sad' then he was calling for him through the house. Sweet innocence. Ok, so the word on yellow jackets is, don't hit down their nest just cause you think it's a leaf. Yep. This is what the Oldest finally copped to earlier. "Maybe I hit the nest because I thought it was a leaf." WHAT? Well ya dang deserved it then buddy! Good LORD. Bet he'll never do THAT again.
Kids always have to learn the hard way. Eating live worms. Hitting yellow jacket nests. What's next? Wait. Don't tell me. I don't think I can take it.
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