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“...coulda fixed him right up”
Let it be
known that, even though I understand the importance of wasps in the grand
scheme of things, I still don’t have to like them.
Back where
I’m from, it had rained about every weekend that spring and early summer
and my father was a little late getting the ski boat out for us to go
riding on the lake near our house. I was about seven and my younger
brother and I took turns being pulled on a tractor inner tube.
My brother
was second to be pulled that day and I sat in the back passenger side
seat, shivering in the wind. Behind the front seat was a compartment just
big enough for me to get in and, maybe, warm up. I crawled in at an
upright fetal position and promptly stuck the left side of my face in a
red wasp nest.
I’m told
that I got stung five times that day; I just remember that it hurt. Upon
seeing my state of delirium, a friend of Pop’s who, along with his wife,
was sharing the weekend with us back at the camp, immediately pulled a
huge, near golf ball size wad of chewing tobacco from his left jaw and
started putting bits of it on my swollen wounds.
I squirmed
and squalled even louder, more in utter disgust than pain, as slobber and
tobacco juice ran down all sides of my head, into my ears and down my
neck. "Be still and stop yer hollerin’, boy!" he growled with
bug-eyed excitement. "You jist lucky I happened to be here. This
Bloodhound’s gonna fix you right up."
"Getting
fixed right up" wasn’t very reassuring to a second-grader,
especially coming from a man with mahogany-colored teeth and permanent
tobacco stains running from both corners of his mouth and down his chin.
Several
years later, again with my brother, I went exploring; walking several
miles down the river near our house with our trusted German Shepard, Tore.
About three
hours into our trip we noticed Tore, who’d gotten about a hundred yards
ahead of us, snapping at the air all around her. That was peculiar enough
but then she started running around in a tight circle and finally fell on
the ground flopping like a fish out of water.
We ran
toward her at just about the same time she ran, screaming toward us…followed
by a thick cloud of yellow jackets. We were young and could fly like the
wind but we weren’t anywhere near as fast as a dog getting the stew
stung out of her by hundreds of angry wasps.
Within
seconds my brother and I were swatting, Tore was snapping and all three of
us were screaming. Tore finally took the lead and we followed suit,
hightailing out of the woods toward an open field. We made it to the road
and, because of our apparent sorry state, were offered several rides by
passersby but I wouldn’t let my brother get in the car with any
strangers. I think he still holds that against me.
We finally
limped the three miles back to the house. He ended up with twenty-one
stings to my fifteen. No tobacco juice this time, just a couple of stiff
shots of Benadryl and a long nap.
Tore went
under the house and didn’t come out until the next afternoon. For the
rest of her long life she was afraid of houseflies, moths, butterflies…anything
that flew.
About a
month ago, I was in the Co-op looking over some pre-emergence herbicides
for my lawn when I overheard a man hurridly explaining to a clerk what he
needed, "Waust spway! Waust spway! Day dot me awl ober my hid!"
He used a few other words that I can’t print describing the experience
he had apparently just had.
I
discreetly pushed around products and peeped through the bags and cans on
the shelves to see what this man was so excited about and why he sounded
like he was chewing on a wet dishrag. The poor guy was, by then, being
handed a big green can of Bengal Wasp and Hornet spray.
One of his
eyes was purplish/green and swollen totally shut. His tongue was sticking
out of his mouth like a stomped toad. His clothes and hair were
disheveled; sweat drenched and speckled with dried grass. He had
apparently been stung by wasps several times on his head and was anxious
to get revenge.
After the
fellow had stormed out of the store and scratched off in the parking lot,
obviously on a mission, the Co-op employee started a conversation with the
man’s buddy that came with him to the store in a separate pick-up.
Everybody
in the store gathered around to listen, "Bill and I were looking for
wasp nests in our club’s shooting boxes. I had gone in the first stand
to check for nests and hadn’t found any, so I stayed on the ground while
Bill climbed the second ladder. He stuck his head in the doorway and found
a large spider web on the opposite wall. He aimed his wasp spray at the
web only to find the spray valve clogged. He climbed on in the box to tear
the web down and stuck his head right square in a guinea wasp nest the
size of a pie pan.
"You
know, Bill’s not a small person; kinda built like a sack of potatoes,
but he bounded out the door of that thing like he was lighter than air;
like Superman, with total disregard to the fact that he was a good fifteen
feet off the ground. He landed belly first, bounced off the ground, rolled
a couple of times then landed on his feet in a full gallop all the time
slapping his head.
"Once
he recovered from getting the breath knocked out of him, he started
screaming like a school girl. I’ve never seen Bill move much faster than
cold molasses and didn’t know he could cuss until today. He said he’s
not allergic to wasps but from the looks of his head, he ain’t exactly
immune to ’em either! I thought he was having some sort of reaction when
we got back to the trucks ’cause he got real sick. He said it was just
because he had swallowed his chaw of tobacco when he hit the ground."
Too bad…that
tobacco juice coulda fixed him right up.
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