Here is my refined story of bees and stuff for all to enjoy! :)
Recklessness; it’s what makes young boys tick. For me being reckless was a part of everyday life, whether it was jumping off of a garage roof onto a trampoline (not agood idea), or stopping the inner tube in the middle of a water slide so that the person behind me could catch up. The thrill of being reckless was often too much to resist and I would often suffer the consequences, and they would almost always hurt.
When I was 12, my friend Kadan and I decided it would be a good idea to try and take out some wasp nests by throwing chunks of dirt at them. Were there better ways to get rid of wasp nests? Yes, there were, but this was definitely one of the more adventurous ways to do it. I don’t think we started out that morning saying to each other, “Hey man, lets throw chunks of dirt at wasp nests and get a huge adrenaline rush!” But as the day wore on and we got more and more bored, things just fell in place.
Kadan lived on a sort of miniature farm with goats and chickens and such, and was surrounded by corn fields. There were several barns scattered randomly across his property and each one of them had about a dozen wasp nests attached to it. As we were moseying along outside wondering what we could possibly do to pass the time, we spotted some of these wasp nests on a couple metal storage units for his family’s tractors. “Hey,” I said excitedly, “can we get your BB guns and shoot those down?” Kadan wasn’t too enthused about the whole idea, probably because we really weren’t supposed to shoot at the buildings. He promptly shot my idea of a good time into a billion pieces with a harsh, “NO!” I felt like a whipped puppy. But I wasn’t going to let
his dreary attitude dampen my spirits for long. I meandered over to the corn fields and sat
down. Kadan soon followed and sat down next to me. I think we were both pondering the
prospect of a lackluster afternoon and how neither of us wanted to live through one of those.
I reached into the cornfield next to us and pulled out a hard chunk of dirt. I fiddled with it for a little while, breaking pieces off and crumbling them between my fingers. I threw a piece off into the grass where it exploded with a small puff. “Hey,” I thought to myself, “that’s kind of groovy.” I picked up another piece and gave it a toss with the same results. Kadan picked up on what I was doing and joined in the fun. Soon we were seeing who could throw farther while sitting down. I would like to say I could, but in reality I think it was a tie. I started to cheat. I stood up and let a few fly. Kadan did the same and soon we were going crazy, letting chunks of dirt fly in all directions. It wasn’t long before one of them hit a barn quite close to one of it’s many decorative wasp nests. The wasps responded by buzzing passionately around their abode trying to discover what had disrupted their calm lives. I looked at Kadan and we both smiled sadistically as we rushed to get more ammunition from the corn fields. We scooped up as many chunks as we could and rushed back to the barn where we lobbed a continuous stream of dirt at the humble wasps who began to get very irate at our meanness, although they couldn’t figure out it was us. We tried several different tactics to get the best shot at the nests; direct hits, shrapnel, they were all fun and exciting and very spectacular. We eventually knocked the nest down. We didn’t hesitate however, to locate another nest and begin to assail it with the same barrage of weaponry and tactics we had so skillfully employed on our last endeavor. These wasps responded with the same frustration as the last ones, and understandably so. We laughed devilishly as each missile exploded and the fury of the wasps raged on.
Knocking down nest after nest never seemed to get old until we decided to end our mission by taking out the biggest nest of all. We thought it similar to fighting the end boss in a video game. The nest was located inside an overhang right above a tractor tire. At first we employed the sniper method; standing far away as we sent our projectiles sailing through the air toward our target. We did have good aim but our weapons were not causing any damage. “That armor’s too strong for blasters!” I said in my excitement. Unfortunately, my little joke went unnoticed by Kadan, who had never seen Star Wars.
Soon we realized that we had to rethink our strategy for this particular “enemy installation.” Kadan decided to implement a sneak attack approach: we would sneak inside the building and climb on top of the tractor’s right tire. Standing up slowly, our plan was to launch a huge chunk of dirt at the nest by hurling it straight up. The get away was the fun part: after our massive bomb had exploded, we would jump down and crouch in the corner of the building, hoping that our enemies wouldn’t detect us, and then when the timing was right we would rush outside to safety. We had to take turns for this tactic, as it was too dangerous to go in full force. I was a wimp I guess, because I volunteered to go first. I sneaked inside the building and slowly scaled the massive tire. Ammo in hand, I cautiously stood up and prepared to fire. Mustering up all the foolishness I had in me, I let my ordnance fly. It exploded directly next to the wasps base and sprayed it with dusty shrapnel. Kadan howled with laughter as I quickly jumped off the tire and crouched in the dark corner. The wasps were buzzing viciously around the nest trying to uncover the source of the disturbance. I stayed crouched in the corner and waited for my adrenaline to tell me when to make a mad dash out of there. I ran. I didn’t get ambushed on the way out either.
Ahh, safe again, but now it was Kadan’s turn. He went about his duty in much the same way as I had, slowly scaling the tire, only his mission was a lot more hazardous than mine was: the wasps were already buzzing with ferocity! I watched from what I thought was a safe distance as Kadan released his bomb into the nest. It was a direct hit and no sooner had his dirt chunk exploded than I finally felt the wrath of an angry wasp. It dove at me right from the nest, swooping down like a dive bomber at an air show. The nerve of that bug! He didn’t even bother to land on me, he just swooped down with his rear end pointed right at me and stung me, stung me right above my left eye. I hollered and ran off through a trail that lead down the corn fields. I wasn’t wearing any shoes and some of the plants were hard and stabbed my feet but I didn’t care, all I knew was that I got stung by one wasp and for all I knew the whole nest was after me. I’m sure I broke a sprinting record of some kind that day, I don’t think I’ve ever run faster. Once I thought I was far enough away I stopped running and sat down, rubbing my eye which both itched and stung terribly at the same time.
Soon Kadan came trotting up the trail to where I was sitting. He was laughing, laughing! How could he be laughing? Didn’t he know that I got stung? Didn’t he know that getting stung hurt? The more I thought about it, the more I realized why he was laughing. We had been
bombarding wasp nests for an hour and a half straight, aggravating so many bugs and I
got stung; I got stung and I couldn’t take it. I felt like such a pansy. I stood up and laughed with him. “I guess that wasn’t really a safe thing to do” I muttered.
Kadan just smiled and said, "Do you want to go play with rusty bear traps and find some evil snakes."
I stopped rubbing my eye and grinned, "That sounds like fun." I replied, and off we went down a dark wooded path.
