What’s all the Commotion?

We had the Bacastow’s over for dinner, swimming and general hanging out last Friday night. We’ve finally gotten back to the point where we feel we have it together enough to have people over and entertain.

Everything was going great. The swimming was fun and food decent. We’d moved back to the front yard to play some more on the swing set when all hell broke loose.

I don’t have a clear recollection of how it all started, but I think I was spotting Lauren on the monkey bars while Ashley and Clay were throwing sticks for Gretchen to fetch. Abigail was somewhere about, while Mark and Sarah hung out watching the kids play. Jen had gone inside to answer a voice mail regarding work.

Then it happened.

There was all kinds of screaming. I think it was Ashley maybe Abigail too.

I looked over and Gretchen had bees swarming all around her. I grabbed her and tried to pull her away from the rest of the group. As we were moving away, I realized I was getting stung on the underside of my toe. Seeing that she had at least 5 – 10 or more bees on her, I ignored the bee in my sandal and continued to pull her away to try and brush the bees off of her. The brushing wasn’t working and the bee in my foot was still stinging, so I took off my shoe to get the bee out of my foot and use my shoe to swat the bees off of Gretchen. Of course the swatting only made Gretchen freak out more, so we all tried to run away and get inside. As Gretchen and I ran around the yard to the garage I saw Mark running off with Lauren toward the front door. Good. The baby’s safe was all I could think. We all went through the house and met on the back porch. Clay, Sarah, Abigail, myself, Gretchen and Ashley had all been stung. Mark and Lauren escaped. As we started administering meat tenderizer and ice cubes, the story came out.

Apparently while playing fetch with Gretchen Ashley threw the stick into our center flower bed. When Gretchen jumped in to get the stick, she landed on an underground yellow jackets nest. Then havoc ensued.

When Mark and I went back out to see exactly where the nest was located, is when I got stung a second time.

Later that night after it got dark and cooler, I went out and took care of it with hornet spray. Wasn’t a very big nest, but obviously enough to be a problem.

Through the course of the weekend, bees and hornets were the hot topic.

This particular video we found very educational.

– b