Son of a B~~!!!

[halfshellvenus]

I was having a lovely bike ride yesterday-light winds, nice temperature, not too crowded-when *STAB*

Wait, was that a- OWWW! Damn it, that hurts! Ow, my HAND!My first instinct was to tough out the sting and keep going, but my bike glove had a suspicious bump in it, so I decided I'd better make sure a yellow jacket or wasp wasn't under there,

Comments

[ryl]

Good grief! Did they send the Keystone Kounty Workers to your house?

We had a day like that last week with the septic tank. The guy came to pump it and discovered that not only has it probably never been pumped before (ICK), the lid collapsed because it's a home-built job from 60 years ago that is so not up to code it's not funny. Irish Storyteller had a Money Pit moment because the septic system was the one thing that wasn't covered when he had the top-to-bottom home inspection done before he bought this house five years ago. It's required now, but not then. So now we have a big piece of plywood with some dirt on top in the back yard and a danger zone where we can't walk.

[halfshellvenus]

It was a very unlucky day for them. We wound up turning on the lights in the yard, because they were out there until after 9:30, in the dark, trying to get things in a state where they could finish it off the next day.

Your septic thing actually sounds much worse. Yikes!

[adoptedwriter]

Ouch!!! Worst feeling ever!
My kid once got stung by a hornet hiding in a hand puppet at the library of all places!

[halfshellvenus]

:( :( How would you even know to look inside a hand puppet that lives indoors? Ugh!!!

[adoptedwriter]

For real! Who knew?

[bleodswean]

Wow. That's quite a day.

[halfshellvenus]

As obnoxious as it all was for us, I felt so much worse for the sewer crew. They got increasingly embarrassed each time they had to ring the doorbell, and the whole thing just kept escalating.

They finally fixed the pipe around 9:30 pm, and we had to turn on the outside lights for them-- which still don't cover that corner of the yard all that well. Poor guys. :(

[swirlsofblue]

Eep that sounds like a nightmare!

[halfshellvenus]

The hornet thing was a shock, as always, and I was lucky not to steer out in front of the bikes coming the other way.

The sewer thing... that was like Murphy's Law unraveling on an infinite loop. o_O

[peterb]

Not a horsefly bite? Those are nasty.

[halfshellvenus]

No-- and I'm not sure I've ever even been bitten by a horsefly. They aren't really common in any of the places I've lived.

Yellow jackets, though-- they're everywhere. I guess outside of the US, they're all just called wasps-- though this variety is more of a hornet.

But you would never mistake one for a horsefly, because of the distinctive markings. I never even noticed the "wasp waist" on them before, because I don't like to be near them long enough to get a good look! I supposed our honeybees have that as well, but they're fuzzy around the middle, so the waist isn't really noticeable.

[songblaze]

No, bees don't have the wasp waist, it's one of the ways you can tell them apart.

[halfshellvenus]

Eeek, you've changed your username!

Here, honeybees all look the same-- orange and black stripes (and the orange is kind of muted), and fuzzy.

The yellow jackets are all the same evil species (here on the West Coast, at least), and the there are a ton of varieties of wasps. Fortunately, less common.

At our house, we have carpenter bees, which are not good (they apparently nest in wood, so they're destroying something somewhere). Large and black and fuzzy, but also pollinators. \o? Never been stung by one of those, but then again... I never get stung except while I'm riding. :(