August 22, 2012
My Facebook status earlier tonight:
Fun at the Fox's.... 13 stings, 5 victims, 3 or 4 hysterical children, about 1,000 bees, 1 cop and 1 mad-as-a-hornet(!) grandpa (Norman D Fox). Maybe I should head back to Idaho.
Junelle Fox Steiner- 6 stings
Ellie Steiner- 3 stings
Levi Nebeker- 2 stings
Rebecca Rae Nebeker- 1 sting
Jim Nebeker- 1 sting
Hysterical children- Ellie and Levi, of course, and Abby and Gabe. Abby was laughing (nervously) Gabe was distressed and over-wrought with the ambient screaming and telling Abby it wasn't funny!
I'm so rattled I almost dated this 19-something or other!!
My family arrived at my parents' home today for a visit. My sister Junelle and her family are here too. After dinner the kids were outside playing. A couple of the kids were up in the tree house. We've noticed that there were some bees* around that tree but it didn't seem too bad. "Don't bother them and they won't bother you." Yeah, right.
Junelle heard her 4-year-old daughter, Ellie, scream. She figured, "Great, she got stung." So she went out to help her. Ellie was up in the tree house accompanied by my four-year-old Levi. Ellie was SCREAMING and stamping and flailing her arms around. June climbed up the ladder to coax her down and realized that there were bees swarming all around her head. She didn't want to climb all the way up and into the tree house and then have to climb all the way down holding Ellie. (It's a steep ladder) Somehow, she got Ellie out of the tree house and the two of them ran screaming (both of them) for the patio. June had bees in her shirt and ended up with 6 stings on her torso, head, and ear. Ellie had 3 stings on her arms. Meanwhile, my Levi was at the other exit, a fire pole. Jim was at the base and told Levi to just jump. He did. Right into his daddy's arms. Levi ended up with a sting on the inside of his upper arm and one on his scalp.
While this was in progress, I was in the house with baby Sarah. I knew that Ellie had been stung and I was hollering directions to someone to get the Benedryl that I had brought along. I saw that eight-year-old Gabe, Ellie's older brother, was pretty much hysterical with worry over his mom and sister. I stepped outside to see what was going on and found my six-year-old Abby nervously laughing and Gabe hollering that THIS ISN'T FUNNY!! I felt kind of stuck with Sarah sleeping in my arms and I asked Rebecca to go to him. She brought him into the house and sat down with him on her lap. Pretty quickly she realized that she had a couple of hitchhikers on her and she unseated Gabe as she stood up. She brushed off the two bees and sent them flying around the INSIDE of the house. I didn't even realize that she had been stung at first. She controlled herself very well. She didn't want to upset Gabe even more. Jim and I grabbed flyswatters and went bee hunting. I got one and the other one disappeared. I think it may have flown out the open screen door.
Pretty quickly it was calm again. I think the entire episode lasted about five minutes. My dad looked like he wanted to throttle some bees. Rick, June's husband, went to the store in search of bee spray. I doled out Benadryl and pain reliever. Mom got the Bactine. It was fun.
Rick came back later with some spray that he got from a neighbor because the store he went to was all out. In the dark Jim and Rick went out with a flashlight and a can of spray to kill bees. They returned. Rick with an empty can and Jim with a sting on his back. Total sting count 13.
Junelle- 6
Ellie- 3
Levi- 2
Rebecca- 1
Jim- 1
The cop I mentioned in my status is completely unrelated to this incident. I just included it because it did happen tonight as well and including it sounded more exciting. :) The story there is that one of the houses next to my parents' is vacant so Jim parked ClifFORD the big red van in the driveway of the empty house. At one point tonight Jim went out to the van to get something and noticed that someone was taking down our license plate number and then went up to the front door and appeared to be keying in information on a cell phone. Jim decided to move the van. A half-hour later or so, a cop showed up at the door saying that someone called and reported suspicious activity at that house. The caller said that he'd seen the van parked there a number of times. Whatever. We parked there when we visited here a month ago and we parked here tonight. The cop seemed like he thought it was pretty silly and he left.
All in all, it's been a weird night. Thankfully everyone seems okay. Don't worry, bee happy!!
https://www.facebook.com/notes/10220640048564166
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