I Hate Yellow Jackets

I don’t mean that I’m wearing a yellow jacket and I hate the color. I’m talking about those little creatures that often live in a hole in the ground. I’ve always referred to them as bees but as I got older I learned that they are in the wasp family. It’s not much difference whether you are stung by a bee or wasp, it hurts. I’ve learned as I got older that a wasp has a thin waist and bees have a thick waist. When something is after you, I’m not going to hang around and measure to see how big the waist is.

My first encounter with the yellow jackets was when I was very small. I was walking in the woods behind our house when I happened to step on a yellow jackets nest. Those little things flew out of the ground and stung the crap out of me before I could move. I was little. I didn’t know what was happening so I sat down and screamed my head off. My mother flew out of the house and grabbed me under both arms and tore out for the house. She got me inside while I was still being stung. I don’t remember how many times I was stung but it was a lot of times.

I remember one day later when I was guessing around ten that my friend Bill and I were walking across my Uncle John’s field. Only, this time, it was my friend Bill that stepped on a yellow jackets nest. We took off running as fast as we could. Bill lived not far away and we got to his place. His mother came out and spread mud on the bee stings. Mud is an old-fashioned remedy for bee stings. Amazing as it was, I was right next to Bill and never got stung once. I was stung many times during my time living in the Pocono Mountains.

There was another time when I was in my early teens that I was walking through the forest. All of a sudden something flew up my pant leg and stung me on my upper thigh. I yanked my pants down and a yellow jacket was still on my leg. I smacked that thing with my hand and then flipped it off onto the ground. Here I was a teenager standing in the forest with my pants down. I’m sure no one was watching but if there was I’m sure they had a good laugh.

I’ve never been a big fan of critters. I’ll do what I can to avoid spiders, snakes, and bees and wasps. I don’t live in the country anymore but if I had a choice I would much rather live in the country than the city. I guess once a country boy, always a country boy at heart.

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