Defending Their Home

The Internet is abuzz with a story about a Tampa area tree trimmer who was stung over five hundred times while attempting surgery on a tree that he knew contained bees, but he did not know that the bees were of the hyper-aggressive Africanized variety. One might say threatening any home or den or lair or hive is inherently fraught with peril and sort of stupid but I must say the Tampa trimmer is far from alone. My dear father, who attended Peabody College, was a licensed private pilot, was handy enough to repair about anything around the house, had served as his own contractor in building a liquor warehouse and an apartment complex that he developed, and ran said warehouse and national liquor importer with his father and brother from 1938 until 1975, was also dumb enough to literally stir up a hornets' nest. When my folks moved into a small gated community in the late eighties, my Dad asked me to knock down a hive of some sort which he assured me was dormant. I jabbed at it with a stick attempting to dislodge it and heard the tell-tale buzz of the angry winged hive dwellers. I told my father that the hive was chock full of something nasty and that he should not "mess with it". Dad had the brilliant idea of waiting until the day of the first light freeze and having a go at the hive with a Louisville Slugger. Bad idea- really dad idea, in spite of the fact that our neighbors were professionals with lawyers, doctors, a locally-famous but unfortunately now deceased anchor man, nurses, but as far as I know no Indian chief, my poor father then age sixty-nine was left to fend for himself with deliberations taking place over whether to drive the two blocks to St. Thomas Hospital or summon an ambulance. In the event, he walked across Post Road to an Eckerd pharmacy and dosed himself up with Benadryl. Miraculously enough that did the trick and we learned a lesson everyone must heed, if you attack any creature's domicile, no matter intellect or size, you may be assured resistance.