ATTACKED

Late summer is a dangerous time in New England, and September last was no different. I was a busy boy. Having done all of the interior work that I thought would bring my appraisal high enough so I wouldn't have to put any money down for the refinancing, I spent the entire year...well, doing what is chronicled in the pages of this diatribe. I'll go into that really soon. But one thing I had to let go this year was the yard. I was so busy with the removal of the barn roof and front wall, finishing out the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, (about three quarters done, but good enough for appraisal), and getting the cellar cleaned up, I let the weeds take over. Oh, I kept the grass mowed and grew a few ragged tomatoes, but I hadn't run the weedeater in months.

So one hot day I donned my overalls, fired up the Husqvarna, and went to town. I did the front yard first. Once in the backyard, I took on the weeds that grow along the welded wire dog fence; they really made the place look like, as my mother used to say, "Tobacco Road."

At one point, along the  fence section furthest from the house, my trimmer line became entangled with a piece of errant wire, and I had to set the trimmer down to untangle it while on my knees.

My hands immediately felt like they were caught in a fire. The pain was tremendous, as if a series of hot needles were being stabbed into the thin skin on the back of my hands and fingers. And because I'd experienced this exact sensation once before, I knew exactly what to do.

I screamed like a little girl, slapped my hands a hundred times, and jumped up, immediately falling to the ground to roll like a log, trying to kill the yellowjackets that were invading my overalls, long-sleeved shirt, and underwear. The ones on my hands continued to sting me. As did the others.

I am allergic to certain vespids. Yellowjackets and paper wasps especially. I have never been hit by a white-faced hornet, New England's most dangerous vespid (go back a few years to see one of THESE killers and the nest they build), but I hope to avoid that particular experience. This was bad enough. I have never been stung by more than three 'ground wasps' as others call them ('sweat bee' is another bullshit vernacular term; you'll call them by other names when you swallow one live from your open soda can), but each time this happened, I swelled up like a tick, my eyes swelled shut, and my joints swelled and hurt as if they were arthritic. I felt my throat get tighter, as well, and each time this happened, I was miles from help. And though I was worried, I survived without going into anaphylactic shock. This was before the days of epi-pens.

As I rolled and screamed, I slapped myself hard enough to cause bruises. I rolled, got up and ran, screamed in pain and rolled some more. I continued to slap my hands, more out of pain from the first stings than from anything still attacking me. All the running was intending to get me as close as I could get to my van, where I had quick-dissolving Benadryl strips as well as an epi-pen. When you are allergic to wasps, you keep your medicine close.

I continued to get stung as I reached the van and ripped open the package and put two anti-inflammatory strips in my mouth, which immediately began to go numb. Unfortunately this did not happen to the rest of my body. Ripping open my long-sleeved shirt, I was amazed to see fifteen or twenty yellowjackets fly from me. I pulled off my tee shirt and saw the same thing. Now they were stinging my legs; I wore shorts under my voluminous overalls. Finally, I sat on the van's side door floor and did my best to remove my overalls. Again, a flood of the little black and gold buggers flew off while I peeled parts of it away, but I had another problem. I couldn't get my overalls off, as my good sized  Merrell hikers were simply too big. Actually, they're not, but doing it carefully after a long day's work while sitting in my bedroom changing chair is quite different from doing it under the desperation of constant stings. Yellowjackets, unlike honeybees, have smooth stingers, as do all vespids (wasps and hornets). One can sting ten times in ten seconds. So they were doing now.

.

I finally untied my shoes, yanked them off, and removed the overalls . My overalls are size 46 waist, far bigger than my thirty eight waist. This is so I could layer clothes underneath in the winter and keep an air space around me in the summer. It also allowed the little wingstings to invade my clothes.

I continued to slap the little shits, intending on stomping them when they fell off stunned, but I stopped when I realized I had only socks with which to stomp them. The ground was littered with them. One more stung me under my shorts, so they came off as well. As did my underwear. I was left standing in the driveway in only socks, still slapping myself. I have no idea how many cars passed, but probably none. My road is pretty quiet. I couldn't possibly care less at this point. 

Once I was pretty sure there were no more wasps on me, I found a piece of wood and smashed all the half-dead ones on the ground. I threw all the clothing I could gather onto the wire fence as I turned and saw the dogs staring at me from the other side of the dog door. I imagine they had never heard me scream like that before.

And I began to swell. My hands got thick, my throat began to close. I pulled out the epi-pen (I have three) and waited. Once in the kitchen, I ran cold water over my hands, which hurt more than any other part of me. Where they stung my body, the pain was slower to wax, but my hand-stings were all on the backs of my fingers and the thin skin of the back of my hand. I can only guess that there are more nerves and muscles and less dermis or fat that might dull the pain in thicker places. I ate a couple of ibuprofen (I Be Broken, Connie named it) and looked at my hands. Tiny red dots were obvious; I supposed these were stings. I waited for the worst. The worst did not come. I went into the bedroom and put on underwear and shorts, another tee shirt and other shoes. I flinched at every touch of cloth on my skin. Not because I hurt (I did, trust me), but because I was so paranoid that I imagined any touch of something not my skin was another yellowjacket.

I'd flinch like this for weeks. 

I figured I received about twelve or thirteen stings, ten on my hands and three more to my body. But there had been so MANY in my clothes! How did I keep from getting stung?

Turns out I didn't. They stung me a minimum of twenty-eight times and as many as forty. It took days for my stings to show, and four days later, I counted eighteen red dots on my hands and fingers. Ten more were obvious on my back, abdomen and arms, and more on my legs. None got to my junk. Well, there was that.

In a few days, the pain subsided and each sting began to itch. That was when I found the extent of the stings. And I still am amazed at my ability to survive this attack without using the epi-pen. Maybe I'm not as allergic as I thought.

It took me a couple of days to approach the nest again. It wasn't hard to find; I let the weedeater run out of gas and did not approach that area for a couple of nights. I certainly could see them flying in and out of their hole from thirty feet away, and knowing how they can attack anything within fifteen feet, I kept my distance. I was now really paranoid of anything flying near me, and remained so for the rest of the autumn. But I destroyed that nest a few days later. I drowned it. There were three holes, and I put my hose right over each hole and flooded the buggers. It took all day, but they all drowned or disappeared. I still avoided the area religiously.

Two weeks later, when I did some touch-up painting in the bathroom, I was washing out my paint buckets by the dog fence near the garage, about fifty or sixty feet from the nest. As I put one of my buckets on a fencepost to drain, something buzzed my face, and I jumped back in time to see that I had nearly stepped onto another nest. They were streaming in and out of a series of holes scattered over three or four linear feet of the fence, and I shook my head. "At least I avoided it this time," I said, going for the hose. This time, the water did no good whatsoever. I flooded that nest for days, using thousands of gallons of water. They'd move over and create a new hole.

I finally got a couple of cans of long-distance spray, and since it was now October, I waited until a cool morning and flooded each hole with a can of that horrible poison. I HATE using chemicals, and hate putting things in the ground where I have no control over them, but I would be damned if I got stung again. In two days, I could approach the nest and fear nothing at all.

I never did the weedeating around the fence. I got too busy with the last part of the refinancing. At least that's what I told myself as to reasons. You can be the judge. I will clean up the property this spring. Yellowjackets are a late summer phenomenon around here.

I'll still keep my Benadryl and epi-pens nearby.