Today I received a reminder of what is now an entertaining fun story but that wasn't the case that day...
Once upon a time, hehe, I picked up an unfriendly traveler, a wasp, while walking through a field. Without my knowing, the little stinker made it inside my pant leg, and all the way up inside.  I wouldn't have known except he proceeded to sting me on the top of my thigh, right next to my hooha. To say I was startled would be accurate.  To say I tore at my clothes like a madwoman would also be accurate. I've never undressed in public quite so fast - or ever, for that matter. The pain was intense, and hurt like crazy yet because of it's location, I couldn't get the damn stinger out after multiple attempts during the day and the venom just kept on leaking into me making me sicker and sicker. I finally managed to twist myself enough into a pretzel with my thigh over my head, and to be able to use a mirror to see the stinger and pull it out.  A feat of exceedingly incredible daring considering I'm over 50.

Moral of the story, don't walk in grass, ever. I swore I'd never walk in grass again. But that won't work so I warn you, look first before stepping. It took me a week to recover, from the swelling, from the nausea, from the mortification at realizing a wasp got completely up my pants - a story I will tell till the day I die.  And as far as fearsome, that was was as bad as the alien that was after Ripley.  

This photo here is the lovely place where that little bugger got me.  A pretty place to sit with the sun long in the day, and to walk about.  Horses sat in the paddock to the left beyond the fence.  I used to marvel watching this place as the sun changed its position and the light drew long shadows from the old tree now dying.  In the later summer months the garden beyond grew big healthy vegetables. Later that year as fall grew near, giant leaves would fall to the ground and I'd gather them to feed the horses.  They'd eat from my hand.  And the only lesson and the one of only two memories I have of my grandfather raced to the front of my mind - I made sure to keep the little fingers out of harm's way and the big chomping teeth of the horse.

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