The Sting

Sunday night while doing my normal things around the house - finishing making my lunches for the week, putting the last laundry away, watching football, having a few drinks - I experienced one of the most bizarre yet hilarious events of my life.

I took a swig from my bottle of apple cider and felt something odd brush my tongue, so rather than swallow it down, I swished it about my mouth a bit to get a better feel with my tongue and determined that there was definitely something solid and pointy in my drink. Most ungracefully, I spewed my drink in a classic spit-take move across the living room floor. (It is carpet: I own a steam cleaner).

There in the middle of my spit-stream was a dark object that upon closer observation turned out to be a bee.

My roommate was sitting aghast the entire time because he had no idea what was going on and I had not said a word. Finally I looked up to him and pointed at the saturated bug, “It’s a bee! There was a bee in my drink!!!” He seemed a bit skeptical until he looked for himself. We both wondered where it had come from, the realized that due to the beautiful fall weather, the doors to the house had remained open all day.

The poor bee - it was only seeking the best sugar source before the desolation (well - desolation may be an exaggeration in central Texas) diminished pollen production of winter set in.

Just as I was feeling sorry for the poor bee, I noticed a throbbing in the roof of my mouth that suddenly grew more intense by the moment. I felt a little knob with my tongue, reached in with my finger and scraped it out to discover the stinger of the bee with the venom sack attached.

I stomped the already doomed bee.

Then I sent a tweet asking for the treatment of a bee sting on the roof of one’s mouth.

To my astonishment, a surprising number of my friends on Twitter replied. The consensus was to take a Benadryl. I did and I survived.

I learned two things from this event: 1) cover my drink whenever I have the house open on the six days a year it is possible, & 2) Twitter cures.