diagram
Typically I'm pretty lenient when it comes to destroying wildlife in my yard. What this means for me is that if a bee nest is being built on my house, I'll tear it down, but if bees build a nest in some remote part of my yard, then as long as they leave me alone, I'm fine with them being there. I pretty much figure that creatures need somewhere to live, and as long as something isn't bothering me, I won't make any special effort to bother it. It's an understanding the bees and I have, and a shaky truce has been held between us for several years...
...until this past Saturday.
For all I know the perpetrator may have been the black sheep of the hive who didn't have the explicit authority to act on behalf of all the others. Or for that matter, he may have been that dim-witted idiot cousin from out of town that every family has. Or perhaps he was a militant radical right-wing bee who felt that the policies of the hive were too lenient towards me and my family. Whatever the circumstances were, Saturday our fragile alliance was shattered by a single random, senseless act of belligerence that ensured that by day's end multitudes of the innocent would be suffering, twitching, limping, or dying in pain.
The suicidal little bastard strapped on an extra large pack of kickass and went on his own personal jihad against my ankle while I trimmed weeds around his hidden fort of resistance. With a swift and stealthy move, he slipped inside my left boot and detonated his venomous fury, all the while maniacally screaming the bee equivalent of "Allah Akbar". I started maniacally screaming a much different word, while directing several random but powerful counterstikes towards the source of my pain in a blatant display of shock and awe. Finally, I was able to extract his crushed, limp little body from my being.
Then I turned a dim and wrathful eye towards his fellow hive-mates, who were blissfully unaware that dark storm clouds were gathering on their collective horizons. They had unknowingly broken one of the unspoken rules: they had built their nest under my house, and were coming and going through one of the crawlspace vents. They proceeded to go about their happy little bee lives, doing happy little bee things, with barely a thought in their happy little bee brains that I was headed towards the garage where I keep my hidden stash of chemical weapons of mass destruction.
And spray them I did. In true mafia style, not only did I kill the bastard breaker of the peace, but I also killed all his family and every last one of his friends. I killed males, females, and even the babies. To say I felt no remorse would be a gross understatement; nay, I in fact experienced waves of retaliatory glee as I watched their pitiful tiny lives snuff out. I left their twitching little bodies strewn across the ground as a warning to any others who would dare oppose my tyrannical rule. Let this be a lesson to all of them - I'm no longer their friend.
And meanwhile my ankle is swollen up like a balloon, two full days later.
CLIFFS: I got stung by a bee, then I went on a killing spree.
edit: spelling & grammar
Typically I'm pretty lenient when it comes to destroying wildlife in my yard. What this means for me is that if a bee nest is being built on my house, I'll tear it down, but if bees build a nest in some remote part of my yard, then as long as they leave me alone, I'm fine with them being there. I pretty much figure that creatures need somewhere to live, and as long as something isn't bothering me, I won't make any special effort to bother it. It's an understanding the bees and I have, and a shaky truce has been held between us for several years...
...until this past Saturday.
For all I know the perpetrator may have been the black sheep of the hive who didn't have the explicit authority to act on behalf of all the others. Or for that matter, he may have been that dim-witted idiot cousin from out of town that every family has. Or perhaps he was a militant radical right-wing bee who felt that the policies of the hive were too lenient towards me and my family. Whatever the circumstances were, Saturday our fragile alliance was shattered by a single random, senseless act of belligerence that ensured that by day's end multitudes of the innocent would be suffering, twitching, limping, or dying in pain.
The suicidal little bastard strapped on an extra large pack of kickass and went on his own personal jihad against my ankle while I trimmed weeds around his hidden fort of resistance. With a swift and stealthy move, he slipped inside my left boot and detonated his venomous fury, all the while maniacally screaming the bee equivalent of "Allah Akbar". I started maniacally screaming a much different word, while directing several random but powerful counterstikes towards the source of my pain in a blatant display of shock and awe. Finally, I was able to extract his crushed, limp little body from my being.
Then I turned a dim and wrathful eye towards his fellow hive-mates, who were blissfully unaware that dark storm clouds were gathering on their collective horizons. They had unknowingly broken one of the unspoken rules: they had built their nest under my house, and were coming and going through one of the crawlspace vents. They proceeded to go about their happy little bee lives, doing happy little bee things, with barely a thought in their happy little bee brains that I was headed towards the garage where I keep my hidden stash of chemical weapons of mass destruction.
And spray them I did. In true mafia style, not only did I kill the bastard breaker of the peace, but I also killed all his family and every last one of his friends. I killed males, females, and even the babies. To say I felt no remorse would be a gross understatement; nay, I in fact experienced waves of retaliatory glee as I watched their pitiful tiny lives snuff out. I left their twitching little bodies strewn across the ground as a warning to any others who would dare oppose my tyrannical rule. Let this be a lesson to all of them - I'm no longer their friend.
And meanwhile my ankle is swollen up like a balloon, two full days later.
CLIFFS: I got stung by a bee, then I went on a killing spree.
edit: spelling & grammar