Just Keep Swimming

Last Friday afternoon, we had an incident. I came home from school and I was helping to get the dogs in, there were a bunch of gnats bothering them. I had Grant the puppy and Mom went over to get Lars....and next thing I know my mother is shrieking and running.

She was being attacked by a swarm of bees.

What do you do? What are you supposed to do? There's this split second where you have to unscramble your brain and act. You instinctively want to help yet protect yourself at the same time.

Her housedress was covered with bees, and everytime she moved, they would sting or bite her through the material. She was laughing and shrieking at the same time, she was laughing at how funny she must look. I went over to try to help her with the bees and she yelled at me to not go near.

So I stood there still hanging onto Grant and yelled at her to remove her dress, the bees were not leaving her alone and flying away. I didn't know if using the hose would help or not. She unbuttoned the front, and ran to the house in her skivvies. We later joked about how it's a good thing the neighbors can't see our house!

So there was relief that Mom was in the house and out of the bees, but then a sinking feeling...Lars (Laura's favorite dog) was still out there by the bees.

We got Mom in the shower and I donned a big coat and gloves. By this time Lars had moved over in the backyard away from the bees and I yelled at him and he came to me. He was very happy to get in the house! We checked him over and figure he probably was stung a few times but could find no welts.

I dressed my mother's welts, she had 10 places where she'd been stung but some of the welts were large and hurt worse, we figure that she was stung more than once in those places. Thank goodness she is not allergic, I don't know what we would have done.

We called Dad and he came home quick. My mother hurt pretty good that night, but is doing a lot better by now. Compared to the amount of bees that were on her, she wasn't bit as much as she could have been.

So we had a really crazy afternoon. I was kinda stressed the rest of the weekend from it. I was running errands before I came home that day, and I just had this feeling that I shouldn't dawdle, that I needed to be home. I'm really thankful that I was there when it happened. I'm thankful my mom is okay and wasn't hurt worse.

Some good did come out of this, the incident was a big reminder of how much I do love my mother and how I don't want anything to happen to her.

Hours later, the bees were still on her dress:
The bees live in the ground and you can hear them at night, they don't sound happy. We'll be taking care of them, can't have this going on! They moved there recently, they weren't there a couple of weeks ago. We now joke about this whole incident, but it was scary at the time.