Life's a bee, and then you die

So the universe has a sense of humor. Or at least the little part that we currently occupy.

After much life, job, health, etc. stress over the past few weeks, things came to a head this afternoon. I'll spare you the soap opera and just say that life has handed me a few lemons lately, but today I decided to just laugh and hope the bees aren't attracted to my lemonade. While letting out the puppies after school today, I see the pre-teen boy who mows our yard walk by and he tells me he can't finish mowing our yard. He goes on to explain that he noticed a considerable number of bees hanging around our chimney earlier today. He is afraid the mower will stir them up and they will all come after him. No problem, we'll wait till they leave and I'll give him a call. I go back inside to see what Oprah can teach me today and hear a funny sound. I walk over to the fireplace and discover that the bees apparently moved into our fireplace sometime today. Hmmm...Interesting dilemma. So I make sure the fireplace is secure and figure that D's almost home and we can figure it out together. A while later, our lawn mowing friend comes running up to our door and says he saw a swarm of bees and followed them to...can you guess? I'll give you a minute
.
.
.
.
.
Our chimney!
We walk outside and sure enough, the entire top of the chimney is enveloped in a black cloud of death, I mean bees. So now I get a little nervous. OK, call the landlord, get the exterminator wheels moving. OK, D gets home, we look at the bees.....hmmm.....then we go our separate ways. Two hours later, I come home from a meeting and notice that the buzzing has really gotten loud. I walk into the living room and see the window covered in bees trying to get out. Yes, out. Inexplicably they have found a way into the house. Shit. I leave a very polite message on the landlord's answering machine, close off the room, stuff towels under the door and immediately google Africanized bees. Not long ago Texas Monthly informed me that Abilene has the largest concentration of Killer Bees in the country. Of course. Where else would they be? Or bee?

So D gets home shortly thereafter and we start to problem solve (I'm going to completely leave out any mention of panicking that may or may not have happened). We try to open the other not-so-bee-covered windows and see if they'll just fly out. No. So we decide to try to open their window of choice, pop off the screen and hope for the best. D volunteers, of course, and I load him up with 3 hats, 2 scarves, 2 pairs of gloves, a down coat and a pillow case over his head and I wait in the yard with a fly swatter wondering if I should just call 911 now. Fortunately, the whole thing goes off without a hitch and the bees leave.

We are so busy shooing them out and marveling at how they aren't attacking that we forget to worry about how they got there in the first place. Before you know it, we are waving our arms around and running from the room once again. Shit. OK, Daniel goes back in with towels and shoves them into any possible bee-sized hole he can find. Then we open the window and shoo out the new bees. Meanwhile a wonderful co worker of mine is trying to track down a guy she knows that comes to people's homes, collects their problem bees and takes them away. No poison needed. We're still waiting to see who wins the bee race. Will it bee (hee hee) the landlord's exterminator or bee keeper who doesn't answer his phone?

Tune in next time for the gripping conclusion of When Bees Attack...Your Living Room.