2008-07-19 02:09:28′, ‘
Laura and I went to get our 4trax ATVs at our campsite and as I was taking the covers off of them. Laura noticed that there was a Hornet’s nest in the tree next to our bikes. It was about a foot in diameter and 8 feet off the ground. There were a large number of hornets going in and out of it and a bunch that were just sitting out on the surface of the nest. These were the ones that would attack anything that tried to disturb the nest. My problem was that I did not know if starting the 4trak would upset the Bees. Laura decided that I should be the one to test the theory and that she would watch from a safe distance. There were no problems when I started Laura’s bike, but mine was right next to the tree. I put it in neutral and pushed it away from the tree before starting it. No bee issues. I went to a luncheon with my Co-workers and told them my hornet story. This got them started telling me about their city-fied experiences with bees. I heard one story about how a bee got into their house which led to everybody running around screaming until somebody swatted it. Then they carefully picked it up with some toilet paper and flushed the bee down the toilet while every body in the house rejoiced. Another person told us about how he had spotted a 2 inch wasp nest under their deck. So they waited until dark and snuck up on it an sprayed it with some bee spray then ran in the house and waited for the bees to die. I also heard stories about how bees can chase people around in the dark and get you and its very dangerous to mess with them. This inspired me to tell the story about the gigantic 2 foot tall hornet nest that was about 5 feet off the ground at the Farm that Nick and I decided to mess with. We decided that it would be real fun to attach a string of firecrackers to a stick, light them and shove the firecrackers into the center of the nest so that the firecrackers would destroy the nest and release a couple of thousand angry bees into the night. We prepared the stick with a large bunch of Black Cat firecrackers taped to the end of it and my job was to light the firecrackers. We talked some kid into doing the shoving. One thing about Hornets is that they keep a couple of guard bees awake around the entrance of the nest ready to attack any invaders or disturbers. So we got setup with the Kid prepared to shove the stick into the nest with one stroke. I lit my match and was holding it between my thumb and forefinger trying to find the Fireworks fuse. The light from the match attracted the attention of one of the Guard Hornets who flew out to investigate. It flew towards the light and eventually into my cupped hand holding the Match and was going Bap ,Bap, Bap, Bap between my palm and fingers which were holding the match. For some reason, this startled me and I yelled and dropped the match and ran. The kid and everyone else around me also yelled and ran. No one got stung but it took a while to regroup and setup for the next attempt. For the next try, we got setup again. I knew exactly where the Firecracker fuse was in the dark. The Kid was ready, He was pumped. I lit the match, I lit the firecrackers and ran. The kid shoved the firecrackers into the hornets nest with all his strength. The kid ran, Every body ran. As I looked back at the nest while running I saw the firecrackers go off. The only problem was that the Kid had shoved the stick all the way thru the nest and out the other side. All the firecrackers went off outside the nest. Bummer. We figured that the Hornets were probably a little riled up and that we should call it a night. The other people at the table started looking at each other and they started mentioning something about the Darwin awards and they felt that people in my family would not survive long in this world.’, ‘