What An Ordeal!

Yesterday after work I was checking out at the grocery store, and I got a phone call from Mark.

Mark: Hey Honey, can you pick up some wasp spray before you leave the store?

Me: Sure, what for?

Mark: Well, Shelby found a nest of Yellow Jackets and they’re pretty mad.

He then went on to tell me that he had taken Shelby outside and was watching her chase a bug and then she started to act funny and lick her leg. (She chases bugs all the time – remember The Fly Hunter)? Mark saw the dead yellow jacket on the ground by Shelby, and then saw all of the others beginning to buzz around. He quickly got her inside, and that’s when he called me.

When I got home, Shelby was her happy self, but was constantly licking her leg. Mark showed me the stinger he had taken out. Poor puppy.

I hadn’t been able to find wasp spray at the store, but Mark got some other bug spray out of the garage. While he went out the front door and started to spray the nest (it was in the hill behind our house), I stayed in the kitchen and started putting away groceries.

I heard Mark come in and go into the bathroom and start washing his hands. I went back there to see how the extermination went, and I was shocked when I saw him – he was all bloody! When he was spraying the nest, the Yellow Jackets got angry (of course) and started flying towards him.

[If you're not familiar with these nasty creatures, they like to get underneath your clothes. Once you kill one, the others smell their dead brother and go into psycho-freak out-attack mode and then you're a dead man.]

He saw all of those flying monsters swarming towards him – one of them started making a beeline towards his face, and he turned around and ran towards the door. He tripped and fell onto the sidewalk – his left elbow was all scraped up, and his left palm was raw meat. I cleaned him up as well as I could, and then headed to the drugstore for some gauze, medical tape, and an ace bandage to fix him up.

While I was at the drugstore, Mark called his dad and asked what to do about Shelby – she wouldn’t quit licking her leg. He said he had some spray-on Benadryl that might help her, so after I returned and doctored Mark up, we hopped into the car and headed out to get Shelby’s medicine.

When we got home, I got a bandanna and an old shoelace and started to work on Shelby. We had to wrap her leg up so that she would stop licking it – we didn’t want her to get a sore from licking so much. I sprayed the medicine on and then wrapped up her leg.

Hey, I know it looks silly, but it was the best I could do, and it stopped her from licking her leg! She was such a trooper through the whole thing – and she’s doing just fine now!

I did a better job with Mark:

Poor guy – he was still pretty sore today. The fleshy part of his hand (well, what’s left of his hand) is really bruised, and I think he might have slightly sprained his wrist. He’s holding up well, though. He’s one tough cookie!

He can’t use his left hand at all and he’s having a pretty rough time . . . you should of seen us trying to get him dressed this morning – of course he would have to pick the pants with the button-up fly!