Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Great Bee Infestation of 2010

Picture Hitchcock's famous film "The Birds," but replace fake creatures of the aviary variety with disgustingly real, wiggly, hellish insects from the underworld. Now you have a pretty good idea of what my Sunday was like.

It started normally enough. My alarm went off, I hit snooze. Typical.

My roommate then knocked on my door, which is a bit unusual for ten to nine on a Sunday. She entered, and immediately closed the door behind her. Odd.

She proceeded to inform me that there were bees in our apartment, five of them to be exact. One in her room, one in the bathroom, and three in the kitchen. She was about to head out, but thought she couldn't leave without informing me of the bee issue. I am glad she did not, as now would be a good time to tell you about my ridiculously irrational (but, let's face it, at least somewhat rational) fear of bees.

Remember the show "Rescue 911" (I never realized it was hosted by William Shatner!)? I remember watching this show. I must have been 5 or 6 years old, based on the dates of the show. In one particular segment, a boy is having a picnic with his family. Unbeknownst to him, a bee flies into his pop can. When he takes a drink, he swallows said bee and his face blows up to twice its size. I believe he also went into some sort of anaphylactic shock. After a brief google search, it may have been that the bee stung him in the throat, causing his throat to swell shut. Traumatic, to say the least. I have been afraid of bees ever since.

There are other factors attributed to this fear of bees, but I believe that is when it started and it continues to this day.

So my roommate and I made an impromptu trip to the grocery store for whatever kind of bee killer we could get our hands on. Turns out they had only one kind. Decision made.

We returned to our bee infested apartment, poison in hand. First we tackled the bee in her room. The bees must have moved, as there were now two in the living room and only two in the kitchen. We sprayed them all until there wasn't any life left in their small yet terrifying bodies. She had killed a couple, and I had killed a couple. Now all we had to do was wait for my boyfriend to come over to clean up the bee carcasses.

I had gotten a bit of the bee spray on my hands, so I headed to the bathroom to wash them. I opened the door, flipped on the light and, immediately, four more bees swarmed up to the light. I was stunned. Two more followed them. A total of six bees swarmed by the light. I gracefully informed my roommate of this new discovery ("OH MY GOSH! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!"). And they were, in fact, everywhere.

They were swarming by the lights, chilling on our towels, conspiring on our clock. It reminded me of some horrible cantina-type scene in a movie, all of them plotting our demise.

I went off. I don't remember much of the horrifying ordeal, other than those bees stood no chance against me and my spray. My roommate couldn't bring herself to kill any of them, not because of some PETA-like principles, but because, oddly, the dead bees freaked her out more than the live ones. So it was up to me, and I just wanted them dead. After it was all said and done, our bathroom was soaked, it smelled horrible, and we had dead bee bodies everywhere. By our final count, there had been 12-15 bees in our bathroom alone.

The boyfriend arrived and cleaned up the bees (swoon) and the roommate called the landlord while I shuddered in the corner, jumping at the site of anything that could have been a bee. They couldn't get an exterminator out until the next morning and, bees aside, it probably wasn't smart for us to stay in an apartment that had just had an excessive amount of bee poison sprayed around it. So we found places to spend the night and high-tailed it out of there. It was 12:00pm. 3 hours of dealing with bees.

We found out on Monday, after the exterminator came out, that they had been building a hive by our air conditioning unit and the bees were therefore coming in through our vents. It was a miracle they didn't get into my room. Darn right! I think God knew I couldn't handle there being bees in my room. Total and utter mental breakdown would have ensued.

Did I learn anything through this experience? Of course. I learned that I can kill bees if given a highly concentrated spray can of bee poison. I can (sort of) face my fears and deal with a terrifying situation if the need arises. And I learned that, if I never saw another bee again, it'd be too soon.

5 comments:

  1. For killing individual bees, it would probably be more efficient to hit them with something than spray them to death.

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  2. You have trouble making decisions. I can't kill bees by hitting them. We all have our issues, okay?

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  3. Way to face your fears and come out alive. :)

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  4. Wow. Now see, this situation would have been equally traumatizing for me if it had been spiders. I don't really mind bees for whatever reason. They're kind of live and let live as far as my experience tells me.

    Spiders, however, are quite possibly the most sinister looking of all creatures. I can usually confront and kill them as long as they don't come close to me.

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  5. P.S. Do you read Orangette? It's the only food blog that I religiously follow.

    orangette.blogspot.com

    Any recommendations for good food blogs?

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