Hornets’ Nest

My dog Bandit and I often walk down our rural road, passing a pasture where cows come to the fence to watch us. Recently I looked up at the winter-white sky and spied a large hornets’ nest hanging from a sycamore tree.

I recoiled, seeing it hanging above my head, realizing I had never noticed it before. I knew from past experience that being so close to a hornets’ nest could be dangerous.

On a Saturday morning in August 2006, I sat on my front porch in a rocking chair, eating toast and drinking coffee. My husband Steve sat in the porch swing. We were talking about my scheduled book signing that afternoon at a bookstore in Forest City.

As I ate my breakfast, a bald-faced hornet made a swoop at me. I swatted frantically as it made several passes at my head.

“It’s trying to sting me!” I squealed, and Steve rushed to help swat it away.

But it stung my right cheek just below my eye. 

I hurried to the bathroom to take a Benadryl tablet. 

“I’ll go get some After Bite,” Steve said and took off to the local convenience store. My aching cheek began to swell, nearing shutting my eye.

I held a cold compress to my face, wondering how I would honor my commitment to the bookstore. 

Around noon I applied makeup to conceal the redness. The swelling was still apparent, but the Benadryl and After Bite had helped, and I could see well enough to drive. I didn’t cancel the book signing but was embarrassed about my altered appearance. 

I located the nest of the hornet that had stung me, hidden in an azalea bush beside our driveway. Steve destroyed the nest, and eventually we cut down the bush. 

This incident was slight compared to something that would happen four years later. On a September day in 2010, our daughter Annie found a dead hummingbird under the maple tree in our front yard. It had come to drink nectar at the feeder that hung from a tree limb and was attacked by a Japanese giant hornet. We had noticed these ferocious hornets buzzing around the feeder, stealing nectar and attacking hummingbirds.

Angered by the hummingbird’s death, Steve watched for hornets at the feeder, and when he saw one, he went and swatted at it.

“Be careful,” I warned, and just then I saw him jerk his hand back.

“Did it sting you?” I asked and ran to him. I found a tiny red spot on his wrist bone. 

“I think it just glanced off me,” he said. 

I told him to come in the house. 

“Where’s your Epi-Pen?” I asked, referring to a self-injectable dose of epinephrine previously prescribed to him when he had an allergic reaction to bee stings. 

I found his Epi-Pen in the bathroom and took it to the living room, where he lay on the couch.

I noticed some puffiness under his eyes. “We better use the Epi-Pen,” I said.

“The medicine in it looks cloudy,” he said. “I think it’s expired. I feel okay, just nervous,” he assured me.

But his face looked pale, his forehead felt cool and clammy, and he was swallowing peculiarly. Soon he was in the bathroom vomiting.

“I’m calling EMS!” I cried.

The emergency workers arrived and rushed him to the hospital. Thankfully, he recovered, and I took down the hummingbird feeder. I knew our hummingbirds could find nectar in flowers I had planted.

When I recently spied the hornets’ nest hanging from the sycamore tree, I wondered how many such nests were around.

I looked for other nests and discovered two more. One was located near the road in a tangle of limbs behind the cow fence. Bandit and I had frequently passed by this nest in warm months, not realizing it was there because of the cover of leaves. It was a thousand wonders we weren’t stung.

I studied this abandoned nest and marveled at its intricate paper layers and dark entry hole. Strange how something so forbidding in one season could be fascinating in another.

Yet nature is an enigma. I just hope there won’t be any hidden surprises in the months to come.