Gus vs. the Frenebee

It was spring.

The sun was warm and flowers were blooming.

Rusty opened windows throughout our house to let the pollen cool breeze float in. Gus did what kitties normally do when windows are open – he ran from one window to the other, sniffing at the tantalizing air.

Meanwhile, a bee was flying around outside near the flowerbed, enjoying whatever it is that a bee enjoys. It flitted about the side of our house until it flew up towards a window. It managed to find a small hole, and like most bees around our house, felt compelled to check it out. It crawled in and found itself inside a window sill. The bee couldn’t possibly know how dire its situation was about to become.

Gus, being a ferocious bug stalker/attacker, noticed the bee straight away and thought, “Bug! Must check out flying bug!” Gus slowly stalked towards the bee and lifted his face to the window so he could sniff at the bee. Then he slowly lifted a paw up to the bee, sniffing again at this very curious thing.

Rusty saw the scene unfolding and, worried the bee would hurt Gus, smacked it to the floor with his strong hand where it lay dazed and confused. Here is what happened next…

Gus: Thanks for taking the bug’s flying power away, daddy! It was fun while it was flying, but now I can get it even better! Ok, here I go…I'll crouch down so it doesn’t see me…flick tail…wiggle butt…aaaaaaand POUNCE! Ha! Gotcha! Now I shall pick you up in my mouth and spit you back out. Take that! And again! BOOYAH! Oh wait, where did you go? Come back here. I wasn’t done playing!

Scratchity scritchy scratch…

Rusty: Stop clawing at the duct vent cover, Gus. Stoppit! It’s bad enough you spit the bee out and it fell in through the vent cover, now stop scratching!

At least Gus didn't get stung.

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Flying Frenebee
Early Morning Frenebee
Neon Frenebee
Night Time Frenebee
The Mowing Frenebee

The Mowing Frenebee

Rusty, being the uber responsible man that he is, takes care of most things around his company’s office. You name it, he does it.

Take out the trash? Check.
Clean the bathroom? Check.
Clean the gutters? Check.
Go to the bank? Check.
Mow the lawn? Check.

You get the idea.

One Saturday morning last year, Rusty was dutifully mowing the grass as usual. Now, he’s been performing this task for many years without any mishaps, so you can imagine his surprise when when things went a little differently that day.

All he could hear was the roar of the lawnmower as he angled around a low tree stump, bumping into it as he went. His brain barely registered a slight pinch on his face as he brought his hand up to brush his cheek. He became aware of a low hum and things flying around. When he glanced down he saw a swarm of ground bees coming out of the stump.

At that moment, pain began registering. Rusty let go of the lawnmower and began swatting at the bees in the air, ducking about to try and avoid the ones flying at his face. More yelling. He saw one coming towards his face, swung, and – SWAT! – smacked himself silly. At that moment he decided there were too many bees and he needed to high tail it out of there. He ran and managed to get inside the office. As he glanced down he saw a few dead bees clinging to his clothes. He assessed his battle wounds, aka bee stings. There were about four or five.

Rusty reached for his cell phone to call me and came up empty…it had been lost during the Great Ground Bee Battle of 2011. He peered outside but couldn’t see the cell phone in the grass. After taking a moment to calm down, he tried calling me from the office. When I didn’t answer, he decided to go out to look for his cell phone. Watching cautiously for bees, he hunted for his phone and finally saw it laying about a foot from the tree stump.

He carefully pulled the lawnmower back away from the stump to restart. Once he got it started, he lined up his approach and quickly rolled the lawnmower over the low tree stump again and again, hoping to kill as many bees as possible. He reached down, grabbed his phone, and ran back to the office to call me and regale me with this epic story of man vs bee swarm.

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Flying Frenebee
Early Morning Frenebee
Neon Frenebee
Night Time Frenebee

Night Time Frenebee

We opened all the windows in our house to let in the delicious spring breeze. After doing some yard work, we went inside to clean up. Rusty walked back to the bedroom and realized that we did not make our bed that morning. He quickly pulled the sheet and comforter up and went on his way.

Later that night, Rusty crawled in bed as I finished brushing my teeth. I joined Rusty in our dark bedroom and crawled into bed next to him. We enjoyed our usual banter (Rusty: let me tickle you - Me: no) as we settled in. I noticed that my arm was stinging as I settled in and my brain was wondering why. I reached down to see if something was stuck in the sheets that might have poked me.

I felt something with my fingers. Something a bit fuzzy. Maybe with wings. And felt/heard a brief buzz.

Shudder.

I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed while saying, “I think a bee just stung me!”

Rusty was not buying it.

“No, really. It feels like a bee sting, and I think I felt the awful thing with my fingers,” I insisted.

I ran to the bathroom and turned on the light. I studied my arm as Rusty got out of bed to join me. He still was skeptical, wondering how a bee could be in our bed. Slowly it dawned on him that he was feeling a stinging sensation as well. At that point he reminded me that bees can’t sting twice, so it must be a wasp or something. Whatever, babe. They are all bees to me.

Rusty walked back to the bedroom and turned on the light. He studied the bed and shouted, “I see it!” Sure enough…there was a large wasp sitting on our bed. We often have bees (and yes, wasps) crawl in through the weep holes in our windows when we have them open. This wasp must have done that very thing and then decided to chill on our bed when Rusty covered it up with the sheet and comforter.

Rusty killed the wasp (my hero!) while I asked where he was stung. He told me he thought that he had a tag on his boxers that was irritating his skin…except those boxers were tagless. Ha! Yes, he was stung just below his waist…on his right cheek!

I may or may not be chuckling as I type. I’ll never tell.

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Flying Frenebee
Early Morning Frenebee
Neon Frenebee

Neon Frenebee

We were 19 years old and sophomores in college. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there was a glorious warm breeze. We climbed into my friend’s brand new Dodge Neon, rolled the windows down, and turned the stereo way up.

We buckled ourselves in and my friend (we’ll call her Molly) put the car in drive. We began to move forward toward the busy street. We were singing along to the music with arms out our respective windows when…

Suddenly!

…a frenebee flew in through Molly’s window!

Now, I know that I have established how much I dislike frenebees so I am sure you think you know what happened next. I promise that you do not.

Before I knew what was happening, my dear sweet friend, Molly, unbuckled her seatbelt, opened her door, removed her foot from the gas pedal, and got out of the car while screaming at the top of her lungs.

Yes.
Molly got out of the car while it was still moving.
With me still in the passenger’s seat.
Rolling steadily towards the street.

I only had an instant to decide what to do as I unbuckled my seatbelt. I could give in to my initial instinct and join my friend outside her car screaming…and watch her car crash. Her brand new car. Or, I could gather up my courage and try to stop the car, thereby saving her from the wrath of her parents.

What to do.

As the Neon continued to roll towards oncoming cars, I threw a leg over the center console, grabbed the steering wheel, and reached my left foot out to the brake pedal. As soon as I had the car stopped, I moved the gear shift into park and then leapt out of the car as quickly as possible.

I may or may not have freaked out on Molly…seeing how she tried to kill me and all.

Yes, folks, I saved the day. Are you surprised?

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Flying Frenebee
Early Morning Frenebee
Night Time Frenebee

Early Morning Frenebee

I woke to the sound of my annoyingly incessant alarm clock and eventually dragged myself out of my cozy bed. I stumbled my way to the bathroom to begin the process of getting ready for work.

I began to pick out clothes for the day when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye…a bee frenemy, or frenebee.

It must have gotten in through the open windows the day before and was now lethargic in its movement. Without panicking While panicking a great deal, I began to think through my options. I considered doing nothing; pretending that I didn’t see it. The problem with that course of action is that it was right by my closet. And I needed to get in my closet.

So, ok, I was going to have to deal with the vile thing. Fabulous. But how to I kill this thing that I am terrified of? The frenebee was lazily crawling on the carpet and I wanted a way to quickly kill it without having to get too close. I thought of the fly swatter, only that might not be sufficient to kill it on carpet.

I had it! My husband’s work boot! It was heavy enough and I wouldn’t have to be super close to the bee. It sounded like a great solution in my head. When I returned to the bedroom with the boot, the bee had moved to the closet door. Oh great, now what do I do? It would be too hard to kill the bee with the boot at the bottom of the door like that.

Back to the fly swatter idea.

I returned to the bedroom with my new implement of frenebee death to find the little sucker had moved back to the carpet. Seriously?! Ok, fine, it’s back to the boot.

I can do this. I can’t do this. Using the boot was still putting me too close to the frenebee for my liking. What’s a girly girl to do?! I thought and thought and came up with a new plan.

I held the fly swatter in my right hand and the boot in the left. Taking a deep breath and saying a quick prayer for supernatural bravery, I brought the fly swatter down on the frenebee, pinning him to the carpet. Then I smashed the boot down on top of the fly swatter on top of the frenebee.

I was much too scared to check to see if the frenebee was, in fact, dead. And even more terrified at the thought of picking it up to dispose of it! *shudder*

So I left it.

Yep. I left it there – under the fly swatter, under the boot – for my amazing husband to clean up. *sheepish grin*

I called the husbandry and told him that I had killed a bee…and how I had left it. I recall him laughing and shaking his head at his silly little wife. But that good and awesome man did not complain overly much about it. He simply cleaned it up when he got home and called to let me know that I was indeed a frenebee killer. And the carpet was not stained.

I may or may not be ridiculous. I’ll never say which one I believe to be true.

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Flying Frenebee
Neon Frenebee
Night Time Frenebee

Flying Frenebee

The wind playfully teased my hair through the open window on a beautiful spring day. I was driving the hubster's pickem-up truck with the window down and the stereo blasting. I turned off the highway onto a back road and stuck my arm out the window. The breeze caressed my hand as I reached 50 miles per hour.

I was singing along to the radio when something hit me on the top of my head. I lifted my hand to feel my head but didn't find anything. I glanced in the rear view mirror, but saw nothing.

Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw something.

Something dangling from my hair

That something was a big fat bee!

Dangling drunkenly from strands of my hair

It must have been dazed from smacking me on the head at 50 miles an hour and was still trying to get its bearings. Have I mentioned that I passionately dislike bees? No? I passionately dislike bees.

At this point, with a drunk bee hanging from my hair (shudder), I fervently prayed that God would help me not panic. It wouldn't be a good thing for me to wreck the pickem-up truck! I glanced ahead and saw a good place to pull over on the narrow shoulder. Chanting 'don't panic' over and over in my head, I gently brought the truck to a stop and then slowly reached up to put the truck in park.

This whole time I was wondering how in the world I was going to get this bee off of my hair!

I'm proud to say that I checked to make sure there were no cars coming before easing the heavy door open. I could have easily forgotten that in my panic.

I checked on the bee.

Yep. Still inebriated. Still dangling.

I carefully took the big step down from truck to pavement when my bee frenemy, or frenebee, suddenly dropped from my hair to the ground.

FREEDOM!

The second after he fell I leapt into the truck, slammed the gear shift into drive, and put the pedal to the metal. I was getting outta there as fast as the pickem-up truck could possibly take me!

It was a close call, my bloggie friends. A close call.

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Other Frenebee Posts:
Early Morning Frenebee
Neon Frenebee
Night Time Frenebee