Ron 2-Gazillion (more or less) Bees 2

So, I get the spray bottle of liquid SEVIN, wait for nightfall (thud), and spray the living crap out of those *!@#%& BEES! Hmmm, the next morning many little bee carcuses, carcai, carcussses, non-living bee bodies are lying around on and in the wall! Woo Hoo! Not so fast buckwheat, there are still a multitude of the rotten little beasts of questionable parentage flying around and crawling in/out of their entrance/exit. Bollocks! Though there don't seem to be as many of them, there are still way more than I want. Sooo night falls once again (thud). I spray even more SEVIN into their scowling little bee faces. The next morning, even fewer faces!

By now I have discovered that there is no storeroom wall between it (the storeroom) and the alley wall so all of the soapy water/Hot Shot/PineSol/Wasp&Hornet Killer/Seven has been going into the storeroom soaking the crap out of who-the-heck knows what that is piled ever-so-tightly into that end of the storeroom. Oh well, such are the adversities of bee slaying.

I feel it is now time to use the bugbom and sealo foamo expando crapo stuff. Off to Wal-Mart I trot and find that it is impossible to buy a can of bugbom. By the way, I'm leaving off the "b" to fool the stupid cybersitter that thinks I might be Alkaida. Anywho, I wind up buying the super economy 4-pack of Hot Shot (my favorite brand now it seems) Fogger. Night falls (thud). I make my way to all most the back of the storeroom, start the fogger, place it on a semi-level box, and run like a dirty shirt for the door. Well, maybe not run as there was the lawn mower, 3 bikes, a table saw, scroll saw, drill press, waterbed parts, pool solar blanket and various & sundry other paraphernalia to avoid on my way out. I then shut and lock the door to wait for the morning. Sunup. Only one or two bees make their appearance. Good. After work there are a few more of them so (thud) I set off another bugbom inside and one outside spraying directly into the bee entrance/exit. Morning comes, I see no bees so I use the sealo foamo expando crapo stuff in nearly every nook I can find/reach. I left the rest of the sealing to Danny since I had to go to work and was dressed like it. He got some of the gunk on his shorts so he quit.

Hoozah! Hoozah! I think I finally won the bee war! Unfortunately I won't have time until after Sarah's wedding/reception to make my way to the back of the storeroom to see what hiveage exists and what kind of disaster I created with all the gunk I sprayed in there. It shouldn't cost much more than the wedding to clean it up.

Two (Gazillion) Bees or NOT Two (Gazillion) Bees

Two weeks or so ago, Josh, my son-in-law was walking to our house from his truck when a lady in the alley hollered at him and waved him over. "Do you live in that house?" she asked. "Yes," he said. "Well you have BEES swarming on the side of your house!" "OK, I'll take care of it" says Josh. I was gone to Douglas, AZ to visit my nephew in prison there and didn't get home until way after dark so when Babs told me about the bees (hmmm, that may be why we've been finding so many bees in the pool) I looked but didn't find any. The next morning (Sunday) I went out to look again and, sure enough, there they were buzzing around the corner of our storeroom where it meets the alley wall. I got a close look and couldn't tell if they were going down into the concrete block wall or into the storeroom. I saw my neighbor working in his yard so I went over to speak with him about bee removal. After our chat, I went to take another look to see if they were African or just plain honey bees. They wouldn't show me their papers but didn't have little afros or gold chains that I could see. While I was checking them out one of the little beasts stung me on the back of the hand. I could see the stinger and the piece of its little butt that it left behind (no pun intended...well maybe not). My natural reflexes took over so I started shaking my hand. The rest of the bees took offense at that and began buzzing around my head. I beat a hasty retreat into the house to avoid any more stings. I removed the stinger with tweezers and put some Melagel on it. It didn't swell up like a Mickey Mouse hand or anything so I must be pretty dang tough. At church that afternoon I got more advice on how to get rid of them than Hillary has ugly pictures on the internet. Everything from soapy water to bugbomb , to prayer. When I told Pete, my son, later on that day he said, "Oh, no problem. Tyler and I have used his dad's bee suits and killed tons of hives with soapy water." He then made several macho animal sounds and began to thump his chest, so I left. I really didn't want to kill the little fetchers if they were honey bees because I like to eat the veggies and fruits they inadvertently pollinate, so I called Tyler's dad, Jerry to see if he would come check them out. He did and they are NOT. Oh no, they are the Africanized ones. He said he could tell because they are darker than regular bees. I mentioned something about being racist but believed him. A few nights later I called to ask him if I could borrow his bee suit since lazy-butt Pete had made NO effort in that area. He (Jerry) said it probably wouldn't fit my rotundity but offered to don the garb and do the deed. I got the 5-gallon buckets ready and filled them with soapy water. Ten gallons poured into the wall/storeroom later, Jerry left comfortable in the thought of no more bees and no more problems. I returned to the wall and sprayed a can of ACE Wasp and Hornet Killer into their little bee home for good measure. My plan was to use some of that expando foamo sealo crap the next morning to bar any entrance/exit in the future. When I went there the next morning, what to my wondering eyes should appear? Not reindeer or Santa but a gazillion bees swarming like nothing had happened. Nonplussed, I bought some Hot Shot Flying Insect Spray (kills for 4 weeks!) at Safeway and waited for nightfall. Spray, spray, spray. Kill, kill, kill? No, no, NO! All it did was tick them off to the point that we had to turn off all the lights and pretend we weren't home. Next day off to Ace I go to buy a bottle-spray thingie that attaches to the hose. I figured I could put the soap in the bottle and spray the little buggers with enough soapy water to float a battle ship. The guy there said to use PineSol instead because it kills better. Some helpful hardware chick said if that didn't work I should use some stuff called SEVIN. She said her grandma had bee trouble and paid bee people $100 a pop THREE different times to get rid of the bees to no avail but when she was trying to buy something to get rid of grubs in her garden, they suggested SEVIN. They told her not to use it around bees though because it would make them croak. Hmm, no dummy she, she sprayed and hasn't had any bees for years. I bought a bottle of SEVIN and some more sprayo expando crap and, once again waited for nightfall. Before it did, I happened upon some AMDRO that I had left over from getting rid of the ants we had a couple of years ago. Great stuff! one application and no red ants in the back yard and no black ants in the front. The ants take the gunk and feed it to the queen, she says thanks, then croaks. Worth a try I thought so I dumped the remaining AMDRO into the hole and on the wall. Sure enough the next morning it was gone. There were still a few bees so I figured they were feeding queenie-pie and would soon be in the bee obituary column... Not so much. They were back in force by the next day. I was unable to use the SEVIN for the next two nights because I was gone to 's Camp for bear/boy patrol all night and was too blasted tired the next night. This is the SEVIN night! I have sprayed them twice and will go spray once more when I finish this. If it doesn't work I still have bugbomb and paint thinner to try. My only fear is that I'll croak before they do and find out God is a bee. A very, very large bee. A very, very ticked off large bee who is not pleased with me for offing so many of his kids.

The Shooting of Bucky Nelson

Of all the people I have shot (almost 2 that I know of) Bucky Nelson was the first.

Let's go back in time to Labor Day weekend 1963. Mom and Dad decided to go out of town to visit friends and left Bonnie and me at home to fend for ourselves. Before you start thinking child neglect, she was 15 and I was 14 and perfectly capable of feeding myself except with my left hand. As they were going out the door my Dad said, "Ike, (he called me Ike) DON'T MESS WITH THE GUNS!" He didn't yell or anything he just spoke in upper case letters most of the time. Now the thought of messing with the guns hadn't entered into my puny little head until then. I had my 22 caliber rifle out of the gun cabinet before they cleared the driveway. Not wanting to be alone in this activity, I drove (yes I could legally drive at 14, in Idaho, in the daytime only) over to pickup Bucky, knowing he would have .22 shells or the money to buy them. He had neither. We stopped by Fackrell's Texaco gas station/store/bar/cafe/motel/post office so he could tell his mom (drinking at the bar) that we were going out to the dump to shoot some rabbits thus distracting her, the other patrons and Quentin, the proprietor, while I stole a box of shells (I had no money and less morals then, okay). Off we went to the town dump mentioned in a earlier blog. We had a passel of fun shooting up the countryside and even a couple good-for-absolutely-nothing jackrabbits. Having expended the entire 50 round box of shells (or so we thought) we headed back to my pickup.

This is a good time to describe my rifle. It was a bolt-action single-shot .22 caliber. That means that before you (or I) could shoot this sucker, you had to open the bolt, put a shell in the chamber, close the bolt, pull a little knob at the back of the bolt to cock it, then pull the trigger and voila, whatever happens to be in front of the barrel receives a small chunk of rapidly moving very hot lead.

Okay, we're walking back to the truck. I am carrying my rifle much like a loaf of bread down at my side with, for no known reason unto mankind, my finger inside the trigger guard. While thus strolling along, my innate ineptitude came to fore and I tripped over some sagebrush and fell flat on my face. Oddly enough, as I was falling I heard my rifle discharge. Being quite sure we had used up all the ammo, as I got to my feet I said, "Bucky, we could have shot another poor defenseless rabbit." "I had another shell in my gun..." "Bucky?" Bucky?" Where the heck did he go? Oh, there he is. Why is he lying on the ground writhing around holding his thigh? Hmm, perhaps his thigh was what was in front of the little opening in the end of my rifle barrel when that little piece of rapidly moving lead came out. Yes Virginia, that's what happened. I picked him up (adrenlin, baby), carried him to the truck and drove like a young madman back to Fackrell's. I went in the bar and told his mom that I had shot her son in the leg. She concealed her hysteria rather well I thought by running around in circles screaming "He shot my little Bucky!" "He shot my little Bucky!" at the top of her ample lungs. Cooler heads prevailed and they loaded Bucky into the back of her car and sped off to the hospital in Blackfoot (30 miles away). There was nothing left for me to do but drive home. I walked into the living room where Bonnie was watching TV, flopped onto the couch and announced, "I just shot Bucky." She said, "I'll help you pack." "You could probably be a state or two away before Dad comes home and kills you."

Dad didn't kill me. I don't even remember what my punishment was. Bucky had a semi-small hole through the meaty part of his thigh as a memento of our adventure. Thirty years later he showed up at my mother's funeral and told me he remembers me every winter when the weather turns cold...and his thigh begins to throb.