my mom

[Drunk Monk]

Yesterday, my mom called me just before I was going to head to her house to say that there's a bee's nest in her yard now. It's irksome when she calls because she can't hear me on the phone - she can barely hear me in person. She often says 'what' reflexively now, even before I've finished replying. That's frustrating. 

She tells me she plugged the nest hole. I tell her 'do not do that.' Bees nests always have multiple holes. I learned this the hard way when I was a kid. Me and my friend Skipper Danasi (I remember that name well because it's a great name) plugged a hole when we were like 5 or so. I have a crystalized memory of seeing the swarm of bees rise above the alternate hole like one of those Looney Tunes scenes where Bugs drops a beehive on Elmer or something. We ran. I got out unscathed. Skipper was slower and pulled up his pants leg to reveal multiple bees still stuck to the back of his calf, trapped because of his muscular action running I imagine. Another crystalized memory. Afterwards, my mom told me to never plug up beehives.

But she forgot and got stung twice, once in the chest and once on the forearm. I reminded her of this story. I also treated it with some calamine, only to learn that she's allergic to it, which she remembered after it got itchy. My mom has sensitive skin that reacts to soaps and lotions. 

Now she wants me to find some bee spray that her neighbor found on the interwebz and hose down the bees at night. The hive is very active. Just looking at the hole from afar, there were some 3-4 dozen bees buzzing around it. I told her we need to hire a pro. She says they're too expensive. Then she remembers that she's had bee hive problems before all over her yard like this. 

I don't want to kill bees. We need bees. But I don't want my mom to get stung anymore either. It's a lot of bees.