Of Bees and Men!

Even though the setting for my blog is fall of 1968 (where I am in the first couple months of 7^th grade), last time I took us back 6 years to August of 1962. It shouldn't surprise anybody that this Dahlin vacation turned into another high drama odyssey in the comedic rescue attempt of Dooh-Dooh Pants, which almost killed him while entertaining the throngs of spectators that lined the shore of the Kings River just below Pine Flats dam.    

 

  

Chewbacca was happy that the paddle board did not end up in a plastic tray in some restaurant as tooth picks (paddleboard pictured to the left).

 

The previously mocking teenagers went back to Rio Linda with “Mud on their face, a big disgrace” (Hey, those are fun words...someone should make that into a song someday).

I took the bag off my head and returned Puke-Breath’s crutches and spent the rest of the day fishing with the family below the dam. 

 

I didn’t like fishing like the rest of the boys, so I spent the greater part of the day climbing the low hanging trees that hung over the river…being careful not to fall into the swift current that would carry me into “The Cow Blender Falls" of death - that Dooh-Dooh Pants had barely escaped. 

BUT, as either fate would have it…or human nature; this day did not end without at least a little bit more excitement brought on by the mischievous schemes of the Wolf Pack.

In a decrepit rust-and-blue trashcan that had the remains of some camper’s dinner from yesterday and discarded remains of  this morning’s fishing exploits – guts and trout heads, were bees. Saying bees makes this scene sound too mundane and just too ordinary when in actuality it was buzzing with the industrious sounds of ten bazillion meat bees doing what meat-bees do.

That old trashcan drummed with the humming and buzzing of a tropical cyclone that could be heard some 200 feet away that gave me the willy-nillies. It was a veritable “cock eye Bobs” as they might say in Australia. Never-the-less, the dented metal can was almost no match for the force of those bees that seemed to have that rusted can spinning under a spell, as if it had floated down river (like Dooh-Dooh Pants had in my last episode) and without being rescued was caught in the turbulent cow shredding falls just below the bridge.

No one in their right mind was about to venture within 32 and a half feet of that thing. But then, we weren’t really in our right mind - were we? While dad was busy baiting hooks and helping to liberate lures that had gotten snagged on submerged logs, two of the conniving older boys warily, but courageously made their way to the trash-can-of-certain-death with an empty Styrofoam worm container.

They had the brilliant (or devious) idea of capturing a bunch of those bees in order to terrorize the rest of us who were happily climbing or intensely fishing. 

Managing to make it all the way to the tornado of bees without getting stung, Gustav must have been channeling Saint Francis. The bees didn’t seem to mind the ooey-gooey container of warm-worm ooze that had been let down into the center of their vortex - the eye of the hurricane!  As a matter of fact the easily agitated bees seemed well pleased as they delightfully swarmed the bountiful grossness that was offered to them as if a gift from the gods itself.     

       NECTAR FROM THE BEE GODS

Little did any of us imagine, at the time, just how much this trickery would upset the industrious little critters.  Snap went the lid, trapping a bunch of them inside, just like they had done to me in "The Hamper of Death" incident (blog post 6/5/2013). I, better than anybody, knew how they felt! All these poor buzzing little guys wanted was to feel important and included, only to discover that they had also been betrayed when seduced by a cunning plot of my older brothers.  Maybe they felt betrayed, hurt, or sad (I don't know exactly), but I can tell you this – The Bees trapped in that Styrofoam worm container WERE MAD! 

Let me put it this way...in the words of Robert Burns, "The best laid plans of mice of men oft go astray!"  or should I say, "The best laid plans of BEES and MEN!"

To wet your whistle, maybe I should just say this…poor, poor, poor…Puke Breath. This trip was to celebrate the fact that he was up and out of bed for the first time in months with his full-length walking cast. In retrospect, my advice would have been for him 'not to have wondered from that hospital bed in our dining room.'  This is the same counsel I would have told Goliath when he faced a ruddy little boy with five smooth stones.  "Goliath - don't get out of bed today. You're in for a heap of trouble." 

Dooh-Dooh Pants' rescue was ACT 1 and now Puke-Breath was about to star in ACT 2 of the show we put on at the Kings River.            Puke Breath had no idea what trouble lied ahead!