I wrote this a few years back. I don't worry too much about Hornets. But Bee's? oh yes.
The bees
Everyone is young once. And for most of us, young means dumb. Don’t get me wrong, some of us aren’t young and dumb. As my wife finds time to tell me almost twice a day, SHE wasn’t young and dumb. No way! Not her! Wives know everything. And you don’t even have to give them a chance to tell it, THEY will TAKE the time themselves to let you know all about it in minute detail. You would think my wife was born already 40 years old. SHE never made any of those stupid mistakes I did! No sir-re-bob-tailed cat! No way baby!
But I get away from the story. When I was about 13-14, I ran with a bad crowd. Its not like we killed, kidnapped, raped, tortured or anything like that. But we were what could be considered Juvenile delinquents. We did a lot of things I won’t bring up here. Things my riding buddy and scheiss house lawyer, Helmut, thinks might still be “problematic”. We haven’t consulted the extradition laws, or statute of limitations on some of the “projects” I engaged in, but some dogs are best left alone.
One of the things we often did was to go “hunting” in the Shell Oil fields, or on the grounds of the Californian Metropolitan Water District (MWD). I would like to take a few seconds here to humbly apologize to the Shell Oil Corporation and the MWD for any admitted or implied past breaches of the law. Anyway, we often went hunting. This could more realistically be called “rampages”. We all had rifles, or even a pistol. We shot at everything that moved in a two mile circumference of our location. And a hell of a lot of things that didn’t move. As I said, we shot at things. Most of the time we shot wide. It’s a wonder of biblical proportions that nothing serious happened.
We would find a nice secluded spot along the oil field fence and use a handy dandy Army folding spade to dig a hole under the fence. Once we were all under the fence, we would remove all trace of our infiltration. It seemed like all my youth I trained to be a soldier or B&E artist. In our best imitation of scouts out, we would “patrol” the oil fields looking for something, anything to shoot. Rabbits, snakes, crows and birds of all types were targets of opportunities. Hell, we once shot up an ant hill for lack of any other targets.
We soon got to know the trails and roads like the back of our hand. After all, we were NOT alone in the oil fields. Shell Oil had hundreds, if not thousands of wells drilled out there. Each one with its own little “rocking horse”, pumping out that black gold. The pumps needed little human attention, but still someone had to every so often take a look at them. So we had to keep an eye out for “The Man”. The oil field personnel drove around in pickups and monitored the wells, and kept an eye on fences, roads, buildings and the like. It didn’t take them long to find signs of our “hunting”.
So we played a game of cat and mouse with these guys. They almost caught us a number of times, but we were always just a little bit faster. Fun, fun, fun! One day we noticed some bee hives. Wooden boxes, about four feet high, painted white. Lots of them. So we sat down under a shade tree and thought what this might bring for excitement into our lives. After a bit, no one could think of anything to do with the hives. You could not steal them, too big. AND of course, the bees might not like that. For some strange reason none of us could bring ourselves to screw with the bees. Wonder why. We didn’t have a bunch of ammo that day, so we went on our way.
Several days later, I remembered that my uncle had given me a bunch of insect nets he had gotten in the Army. Big huge nets that one pulled over ones head, even when you have a helmet on. Tuck it into your shirt and presto! Bugs are no longer a problem! So I brought the nets along with us when we went into the oil fields again. After some thought, we came up with a nice plan. You just tucked your pants into your socks, and pulled the sleeve of your long sleeved shirt over your hands! With the net on your head, you were bee proof!
So we hiked on down the way to the bee hives. Got suited up, and made our first bee raid! To give ourselves the upper hand, we cut branches off some trees. These were our “bee swatters”. We found that when you used the branches like a fly swatter, it killed lots of bees! Hell, you could sweep the air around you and wipe em out! We were pretty smart. But what good was all this get up, without a REASON? Well………..HONEY. Oh yes, honey! Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh did that honey ever taste sooooooooooooooooooooooo good! I can almost taste it now.
We would slip up on a hive, toss our rope over the top, and pull the hive over. AND THE SKY WOULD DARKEN WITH BEES! Oh yes, the sun would be blotted out! After toppling the bee hive, we would head for the hills. You had to give the little devils a chance to calm down. The bees were madder then hell, and only a fool would stay there. Keep this thought in mind.
When the bees had more or less settled down, we would go back and steal two of the honey comb slides apiece. Then we would run about a mile or so away, to enjoy the loot. Sometimes we did it two times in one day. We did this off and on for several months. Never got caught, but once or twice we thought we had been seen.
One hive was REAL big. Lots bigger then the others. We called it the “Mother Lode”. We figured that that hive had to have the best and most honey in the world. That hive was going to be next! So we planned it out. We staked out that part of the oil field. We learned when and from what direction the workers came. We had it all plotted out. It was like The Great Train Robbery! We had several lookouts. We had extra branches. We had three escape routs dug under the fence. Only the boldest of the bold world accompany the deep strike team. We were ready!
On that day, we set out KNOWING we were bad dudes. We checked our gear before going under the fence. We double checked it just before we assaulted the “Mother Lode”. It went off like clockwork! Perfect! Until we got to the part of pulling over the hive. It was too big! To heavy! It would not topple over! What to do? We retreated back to our regroup point. After talking about it, we decided to try again. This time I tied the end of the rope around my waist, in a slip knot so I could get away fast. And it worked! It came crashing over.
And the sky turned black with bees!
And I could not get the damn rope untied from my waist.
As my Grandfather would have said, “Hot Damn boy, what have you done now?” Oh was I in deep do-do. I had tied the knot without having my sleeve pulled over my hand. And no way was I going to take my hand out of the sleeve now! I could not even see my hand. After about ten billion swipes with my branch in three seconds, not only were all the leaves gone, but all the side branches! The only thing left was the part in my hand! And the sky was still dark. Nothing but bees to be seen AND heard. Bees. I could not see a damn thing but bees. No one could see me! I was just a figure covered in bees! Holy crap.
I started to scream for help! At the same time, several bees had somehow made their way into the bee net. Not much room in there, what with my head and all. So the bees flew around and around my head. So not only do I have bees outside the net, I now have who knows how many inside with me! Holy crap.
In between pounding on my head and face, to try and kill the bees inside, I was trying to get the knots undone on my waist. Neither job got done. It’s just not possible for me to see where the rope is, try and beat bees to death inside the net and keep from messing my pants at the same time. Several times I felt someone trying to get the rope off me, but to no avail. Then my head and face began to hurt! Between bee stings and me hitting myself ever harder in my panic to try and kill the little devils inside the net, we were reshaping my face! Oh, yes, I wear glasses. That added to the joyful situation. The glasses fell off. I am blind without my glasses. Not that I could see for all the bees on the outside of the net. By then I was about to piss my pants anyway. Holy crap.
At some point in time, someone yelled at me to “come on”! The rope was no longer holding me; so we took off like our tails were on fire. The bees followed us. We hit the one mile marker. The bees were still with us. We went to the second escape hole. The bees were still with us! This had never happened before! On we ran! Bees all around us! I know I was about to loose my mind. And my little buddies were still flying around the inside of the net! Every once in a while one would sting me. My upper lip swelled up. My ear started to swell. The back of my head hurt like hell. And I naturally felt like Mohamed Ali had worked me over, from my own pummeling of my face! I was one sad looking dude.
About fifteen minuets of running seemed to thin out the bees, but not enough to take the net off. The kid next to me, Mark, told me he could at last see me, and not just an outline of two hundred billion bees. And still we ran. The damn bees at last were almost gone, but we kept it up till the last escape hole was long behind us. And at last we could walk. We sat down a few yards further on and started to dig with our hands. We wanted out, and it didn’t matter how. At last, the hole was deep enough and we scooted under. We all lost buttons and parts of our shirts, but we never felt it. I pulled that damn net off my head and several bees flew off! My face looked like a punching bag that had been hit with a train. I laid back and thought that I would NEVER, EVER, fool with a bee again, let alone eat honey. As I sat up, I pulled my socks down and urn-tucked my pants. Two bees flew out of my pants and stung me! I was on my feet and heading down the road like a low flying aircraft! Never to fool with a bee again.
