As coincidences go, it was about a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10.
My editor had assigned me the article about the bee
specialist in early July, but it was one of those rare times that I had nearly
three weeks between an assignment and a deadline, much longer than usual. So I
did the interview but then became a little indolent about drafting it.
And time was running out. Time was running out dramatically.
In fact, it was less than 24 hours to deadline and still hadn’t written it.
On the day it absolutely had to be done, I set out for a
four-mile run. A mile and a half in, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my
ankle. I looked down and spotted an insect clinging to my sock.
A bee, I thought right away. Except I knew it wasn’t a bee,
because one of the misconceptions the bee researcher had told me he hoped to
debunk was that bees are the source of most stings. “If you are outside and
something stings you, it’s more likely a wasp or a hornet,” he had said. “Bees
rarely sting. And when they do, it’s not very painful.”
This was painful. A wasp, I corrected myself. And at that
moment, the coincidence of getting stung on the very same day I was on deadline
for an article about bees didn’t seem particularly significant to me compared
to the stabbing pain emanating from my ankle.
But the wasp was gone; I’d brushed it off. And I was still
running, and that seemed encouraging. My mother had her first experience with
an allergic reaction from a sting when she was in her early fifties; it
occurred to me at that moment that I might possibly have an allergic reaction
to this sting, but even though it hurt, I wasn’t having any trouble breathing.
I had a phone in my pocket that I could use to call my husband or call 911 if
that changed. And I’d already completed a mile, so even if I had to stop, I
still had enough distance to qualify as a streak day according to the rules of
the United States Running Streak Association, under whose guidelines I was fast
approaching my seven-year anniversary of daily running.
I wondered where that wasp had come from, though. I’ve been
stung other times throughout the years, but never while running on the road,
only when walking in meadows or fields or in the woods, or once while picking
mint in my yard. And why on my ankle? Had the wasp been perched in the roadway
near where my foot struck? It seemed strange.
The run was an out-and-back, and I resolved to keep my eyes
on the pavement on the return trip when I reached the same point in the road,
to see if there were wasps sitting there on the ground.
But this time instead of seeing them, I heard them first. A
zooming noise and then four or five wasps flying straight toward me, landing on
my arms and legs.
I ran faster, and flailed at them with a terry cloth towel I was
carrying as I ran, and within seconds, they were gone. Now I had four new
stings and the indignation of having been ambushed, but still no serious
reaction. Four more places hurt, three on my legs and one on my forearm, but no
trouble breathing. No lightheadedness. Nothing serious.
So it was yet another one of those situations that seemed
initially unfortunate and then the opposite. They could have stung other places
that might have hurt more, rather than keeping to my arms and legs. Had I not
been carrying a small towel, it would have been harder to brush them away. And
being ambushed by four or five wasps wasn’t like being swarmed by twenty or
thirty.
Ever since my kids stumbled across wasps in the woods a few
years ago, I had wondered what the best strategy was for escape, and after
yesterday’s experience, I feel confident that running away from them in the
right reaction. It’s not what you’re supposed to do if encountering a bear or a
moose or a hostile dog, but it seems to work with wasps. Maybe hornets too.
But probably not bees. Because they don’t sting. And if they
do, it doesn’t hurt. I learned that from the bee specialist I interviewed, and
now I have an hour to get that article written. If the wasp sting was a
not-so-subtle reminder from the universe to stay on task, I suppose I should be
grateful.
But, coincidence or not, I don’t think I’ll accept any
assignments to write about shark, bear or hippopotamus specialists any time soon.
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