If you get tired of bumblebee stings, try those of yellowjackets. Saga with a moral:
HOW PEOPLE STING WORSE THAN YELLOWJACKETS
Once I slept in a sleeping bag on a hill in Berkeley, CA, US. Fine until I awoke in the morning. Many yellowjackets upset with me as a trespasser upon their nest in the ground. I fled, pulling my bag with me. But, hey, where were my glasses. I heard this loud, “Nnnnnnyyyyyyaaaaaaa!!!” I tried to retrieve my specs to no avail; the enemy had retribution, compensation or whatever. I went down to the nearest hardware store to buy some insect spray with which to blast the little $%&^^&)(&#^*)s, but didn’t have enough cash on me, so I went to a fire station nearby to see if I could borrow some spray from them. They didn’t have any, but they saw that I had lots of stings on me, and being in the rescue business, they insisted that I should get taken to the hospital to get checked out. I had had a few bee stings before, and a few yellowjacket stings, and had had no trouble with them; but I had never received a quantity of 40 or so, as I then had; so I finally stupidly acceded to their request and they called an ambulance.
Well, due to the general possibility of anaphylactic shock, the medics in the ambulance started squirting me up with Bendryl and epinephrine, and then, when I got to the hospital, I really got the full dosage of these drugs. One catch though, I had untreated chronic angle-closure glaucoma in one eye and a narrow angle in the other one. Things like Benadryl are not supposed to be administered in such cases. In any case, I do not believe a patient cannot be monitored, even in an ambulance, sufficiently well to know whether or not any shock is about to occur.
Well, I don’t think the progress of my eyes was changed any, but I didn’t have any money for the ambulance and ER care, so the City and a charity were out something like $750 for all this absurdity. But it was all politically correct, in this capital of such things.
After I got out of the ER, I was able to go up to my sleeping site and pick up my glasses. Not a yellowjacket was in sight at that time. They hadn’t pulled my glasses underground. I guess they figured their attack that morning had been “spectacular” enough. . .and that, well, even trifocals don’t quite hack it for multilenticular eyes like those of yellowjackets.
So, anyhow, I still sleep in the woods on occasion, but I haven’t been to a fire station since. They should stick to putting out fires.
Ray (stung more than once)