prickvixen | (no subject)

Huh. So that's a bee sting.

I'm biking to the store, and something small banged against my helmet, as things often do, and I kind of absently wave my arm at it, and then it's on my arm, and it's a bee. And I kind of freak out, like I do, and try to scrape it off of my arm onto my side or something, and then I feel something like a needle pricking me. "Fucker just stung me!" I exclaim, and I scrape it off a moment later. I think when you sound that offended at being attacked, that's a sign that it's not very serious. Also, under the panic and annoyance was this kind of relief, the moment I felt the sting, like 'well, that's one less thing to worry about.'

I pull over and flick the stinger out of my arm; I think it might've been a yellowjacket rather than a bee, because it was smooth and came right out. The pain from the venom itself was like a neuromuscular toxin, like when you work out too much and your muscles hurt. It was pretty bearable, but as minutes passed it grew, and I started wondering if it was going to really hurt, if my arm was going to swell up, etc. About five minutes after that, it had pretty much dissipated. I had a little lump on my arm and a red area, and that was going away, too. The area feels a little tight and stiff. Actually, I got a little high off of it. I'm not sure if it's the toxin or the adrenaline. It's just remarkable how inconsequential it was.

...because when I was a kid, I was mowing someone's lawn, and apparently a bee got me on the neck. I never found a stinger or anything, so again, maybe a wasp or something. I stopped halfway through the lawn, went home, was crying and bawling and carrying on, and it seemed like it hurt for hours. This lawn-mowing thing was getting way too dangerous, just so I could buy Dragon Magazine every month.

I'll probably still freak out when there's a bee flying around me, but I hope maybe I'll be more sanguine about it now.

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I would like to link my cringing and whining and flailing whenever there is a bee around to the time myself and three friends were taking a shortcut through the woods. I think we were about eleven years old One of my friends was way ahead of the rest of us so he stopped to sit. Bastard sat right on the entrance to a yellow jacket hive in a rotten log. He got away with only one single sting. When the rest of us got to where he had been I was the first to notice something was wrong. There was a lot of leaf litter on the ground and I thought I was getting bitten by a snake when I felt three stings in rapid succession on my ankle. I looked down for it, slapped stupidly at my leg, turned in a confused circle and pretty much then is when the bees found my head and neck. Fifteen minuets of screaming curses and flailing arms and running panicked through the woods ensued. I would like to say that’s the reason I freak out when a bee is around, but I think I freaked out before then too.

Have you ever been stung by a scorpion? That's an entirely different thing.

Yeah, I'd say multiple stings by a cloud of insects would definitely be reason to freak out.

No, I haven't been stung by a scorpion. What's that like?

I was lucky enough to be stung by the only species of scorpion in North America that is associated with fatalities That link describes temporary loss of the use of an affected extremity, but I was stung in the back, I just got tingling in my fingers and toes. It was incredibly painful around the area where I was actually stung. I've never been stabbed, but I would compare it to that.

Here is a picture or two of the species that I was stung by. They are scrawnier and uglier than most.

I think with wasps and yellowjackets, or one of the two, the stinger doesn't come out... so if you found one, it was probably just a normal bee.

They're not very smart.

Hmm, I thought bees had barbed stingers, so when they sting it sticks, and they disembowel themselves trying to pull free.

That's the idea, yeah. I've never had the stinger actually stick in me, though, and get left behind, and I've had half a dozen beestings in my life, so I'm not sure just what they look like.

It's interesting, isn't it? Beestings are just horrid for the people who are allergic to the toxin. Those of us who aren't suffer less than if we'd been gotten by a mosquito.

Mmm, maybe. It's a fast burn but it's still pretty intense. I wouldn't want to be stung anywhere sensitive; this was just the inside of my arm. Still, I was thinking about the potential recreational-drug applications of bee venom...

I learned when I was a young boy in Missouri not to smoosh a bee in any way. You can get away with swatting them (or at least I have so far) but not try to kill them by crushing them between body parts. One day in Missouri I'm standing around with a friend or two and felt something poking the back of my knee. I figured it was just a fly, as there's more than our fair share in Missouri, so I just kinda bent my leg to catch it and crush it and go on with my day. I then thought I had been shot in the knee. Suffice to say that for the next year or two I was deathly afraid of bees, although having never been stung since kinda takes the, err, sting out of the experience.

And about two years ago when I was doing security for the John Ball zoo in GR, my partner managed to get herself stung on the foot while on rounds, because she was wearing open-toe sandals. I ended up having to radio another post to call an ambulance for her because she is quite literally deathly allergic to bee stings. Thankfully a news crew happened to be heading back to their truck as I carried her out to the parking lot, and they took her to the hospital for me. She got an almost-writeup for wearing non-regulation footwear on the job, waived because well, she almost died, and I got an attaboy that didn't keep me from getting fired 6 months later. I think I was supposed to learn something from that, but I have no idea what.

This lawn-mowing thing was getting way too dangerous, just so I could buy Dragon Magazine every month.

That is so cute. <3