You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

BOB’S HORNETS

Ray Babb and I decided to ride our bikes to his family farm for the weekend. I was 12 years old. Ray was a year younger. The farm was near Fern Ridge Reservoir in Lane County, Oregon. We packed food and clothing for two days into backpacks and set out on the thirteen-mile ride. I don’t remember the ride out to the farm. But I remember, vividly, the ride back home.

Ray’s family farm had a caretaker who lived in the farmhouse. It also had a “hunting cabin” and horse barn beyond the pastures, next to a line of trees, near the sloughs below Fern Ridge dam. We arrived at the cabin and set up housekeeping. We made a roaring fire in the huge stone fireplace, which was located in the center of the cabin. The stone wall in the bedroom was the back of the fireplace. It radiated heat into the bedroom all night. We cooked and ate our meal and planned to hike around the wetlands the following day.

In the morning, after breakfast, we started our hike down the horse trail to the duck ponds. We weren’t hunting. It was just a walk in the refreshing Fall air. The trees were still colorful, but they had lost most of their leaves, making a damp golden carpet under our feet. Not far from the cabin. Just 200 yards beyond the horse barn. We were stopped by a low limb of a willow that stretched across the trail. On that limb hung a bald-faced hornet’s nest. The nest was very large. It was bigger around than a basketball. It was an elongated pear shape with an exit hole at the bottom. If a horse or a man were to brush against the branch, they would surely excite an angry swarm of these black devils to attack them. It was clear that we had to do something to get rid of this nest.

For the rest of the day, we mulled over our strategy. Finally, we had a plan. From the horse barn, we took two large paper feed bags and some baling wire. After dinner, when it was absolutely dark, we took a pruning saw and walked up the trail to capture the hornets. When we reached the nest, the hornets were quiet, but not for long. I stood on one side of the hive with a feed bag. Ray was on the other side with baling wire. When we were set. I opened the bag below the hive and, with a quick motion, slid it up over the hive and tightly collected it around the top where the hive attached to the limb. Ray used the baling wire to secure a tight fit. Inside the bag, the hornets were going crazy. I imagined them chewing their way through the bag. Using the saw, I cut off the limb on either side of the hive, and we dropped the whole thing into a second feed bag. We tightly folded the top of this second bag and secured it with more baling wire. We hiked back up the trail to the cabin with our trophy. The furiously buzzing bag of hell was left on the back porch.

The following day we were delighted to find no hornets outside the bag. But there was a problem. We had to ride our bikes thirteen miles to get home. If we left the bag of hornets there on the cabin porch, we thought they would eventually chew their way out of the paper feed sacks and attack all who approached the cabin. I imagined that beautiful hive hanging in my bedroom. So when it was time to leave, I grabbed the bag, folded it over my handlebars, and we started home. I don’t know how many times my pedals had to turn for each of those thirteen miles, but with each rotation, my knee hit the bag and the hornets roared.

Mom had a large chest freezer in the basement. It was mostly empty. That is where the bag or hornets came to rest. Mom didn’t use the freezer very much. However, each time she did, she would tell me to “Get those bees out of my freezer. “ It was Spring when I finally got around to it. They had been there all Winter. I took the package outside. I let it warm up for a day. Then I shook it. There was no buzzing. Remembering the night we captured the nest, I removed the bags. The bottom of the inner bag was piled with dead hornets. The nest, though it was made of “paper”, had miraculously escaped damage. I proudly hung it in my bedroom and, for some time afterward, feared that perhaps one angry hornet may have survived to retaliate as I slept, just as I had caught them as they slept, The previous Fall. It would seem that this was the end of the story. But I have not yet told you how my high school girlfriend’s father, Bob, is tied to this story.

Five years later, in The Fall before my senior year of high school, I was in love with Irene Street. I even liked her family. She had four younger sisters, a mom, and her dad, named “Bob”. I especially liked Bob. He was a local housebuilder. He was a lean, gentle, and good-humored man. One evening that Fall, I was invited to a backyard barbecue at the Street’s home. In the course of the evening, Bob mentioned that there was a bald-faced hornet’s nest in his shrubs. He was concerned that one of the girls would bump into it and be stung. I told him the story of capturing the hornets with Ray.

About a week later, I went over to Street’s home to pick up Irene for a date. Bob came to the door. He was a mess. His face and arms were swollen and seemed covered with sores. I asked, “Bob, what happened to you?” He looked at me with a wry look of loathing, but with a smile as if there was something humorous in what he was about to tell me. He said, “I followed your advice and bagged the nest. I put it in the freezer just as you said. Then, a couple of days later, when all was quiet inside the bag, I took it out and threw it on my pile of burning leaves. I turned away from the fire and continued raking nearby.” It didn’t occur to me that the paper bag could burn away and that the heat would thaw the hibernating hornets.”