Yellow Jacket

So I'm in a bit of a mood right now, since I was stung by a yellow jacket. While seated at my desk.

Normally I am cool with intrusions of wildlife into my daily life, even to the extent of the mosquitoes that got in over the weekend. But my first warning of this particular intrusion was a sharp pain at my elbow when I moved it to a place the yellow jacket did not care for, and it lashed out at me.

As a kid, I was always afraid of bees, but two weeks on Kangaroo Island in southern Australia, catching and painting honeybees, had apparently cured me those issues (but that, as they say, is another story). Nonetheless, I cast the yellow jacket down and stepped on it. A couple times, but after the second it was purely out of spite.

So there were some local folk wisdom as well as the Internet for what to do. Since I am not allergic and there was no obvious stinger harpooning my flesh, I iced down the area and took a couple aspirin. The Internet also recommends applying an onion or baking soda to the area, but we were fresh out.

The yellow jacket fared much worse than I, but as I said, it has left me in a mood.

More later,