Teetering Bees

A few days ago my sister and her three girls, AJ (4), MM (3), and Baby E were over at our house. We have a little plastic teeter-totter that we picked up somewhere, so AJ and MM were playing on it. They are close enough to the same size that AJ just had to push up gently and then shift her weight to come back down--MM didn't have to do anything but hold on and grin. :-)

Well, after a while AJ started going harder and faster and pretty soon she dropped one of her clogs, much to the girls' amusement. She managed to get the shoe back on, but the next time up she lost both shoes! We rushed over to help her get them on before she fell on her noggen trying to look at the shoes while she was still in the air.

But as I bent over to get her shoe, I noticed a yellow-jacket fly out of it! That seemed odd to me, so I looked closer. Right where the seat of the see-saw touched the ground there were about three dead bees. "There must be a nest under that!" We looked and sure enough, there were two holes under each seat leading to the hollow tetter-totter board. Inside we could see the shadow of bees crawling around and a dark mass where the nest was.

Yikes!! We whisked the girls off the toy and hustled them toward the car, ready to shove them in and slam the doors if a hive of bees came swarming angrily out. But, thank God, the bees seemed too confused about their teetering house to be mad and only staggered confusedly around.

It brought back memories of one time when my older sisters and some cousins their age were playing Indians in our large backyard. Some of the kids were sliding down a little hill, when all of a sudden a couple of the boys started yelling and running wildly away. "He got hit by an Indian arrow!" one of the younger boys screamed, almost serious, I think! :-) But then all the kids were surrounded by angry bees. It turns out the "hill" they were sliding down was a bee hive! There were quite a few stings, but nothing more serious and it made for a memorable family gathering! LOL