yeowtch!

I nearly made it to the 40 year mark without suffering a bee sting. I'll be 40 the day-after-tomorrow, and YESTERDAY I was trying to remove a type of yellowjacket from within my house where my 2 year old boy is, to outside where my neighbors were walking over to see what I was doing. With a pair of canvas pants wrapped improvisationally around my hands, I pressed the bee against the screen door but the screen had too much "give" in it to squish it. I got the beast's legs pinched between my fingers, opened the screen door and was trying to figure out if I should throw the shorts down and run for it, leaving it to sting my neighbors, or how to squish the thing - I looked down, and its abdomen was thrashing about, needle extending and retracting, questing like some blind, deadly worm -- and then it shoved the needle straight through the denim and into my thumb.

That is some surprising shit. It felt like the needle went all the way to my first knuckle. I screamed and scared the hell out of my neighbors. Then I started sucking on my thumb, hoping to get the poison out. Then I started hoping I wasn't allergic, because I've never been stung before. I didn't die, so I'm not allergic; I was seriously euphoric for a bit, because I've never known if I was allergic to bees or not.

Anyhow, today it feels like I burned my thumb; it's throbbing and a little painful, but mostly feels like some odd internal pressure is built-up and can't release.

Bee stings aren't nearly as bad as I thought; not that I'm signing up for more, mind you...

Edit: Sass via benchilada