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Despite
this good advice, one Sunday afternoon in late summer, a group
of us boys discovered a large hornet nets in the edge of Great
Uncle Will's pasture. When I say it was big, I mean really big!
It looked like a gray paper football, but was about twice as
large. There was a continuous flow of hornets to and from the
nest… doing whatever hornets do to earn a living. We had heard
that hornets would attack light colored objects when disturbed,
so one of the boys who lived nearby went home and got a section
of an old bed sheet from his mom's rag bag. We tied it between
two poles and stuck it in the ground about 15 feet away from the
nest, forming a large white banner. This was all we needed to
decoy the hornets. I'm still not sure of our ultimate objective
We were all equipped with slingshots made from forked sticks and
strips of old inter-tube rubber. As always, we had a pocket full
round rocks from the gravel road. I gave the nest the first shot
and got a direct hit. Not much action, so we all put in a couple
of lobs and bingo! We reached critical mass with our attack. Our
theory was right… the hornets did go for the white banner.
Unfortinally they didn't know about the limitations we had place
on them. We would have been a lot better off if we had been
wearing shirts. We all ran but we didn't know how fast hornets
could fly. It seemed as though they were flying tail first
because they hit with the impact of a 38 slug with an immediate
sting. After running about 200 ft and only receiving one sting,
I thought this was far enough away. About that time two more hit
me. Everyone else had about the same luck.
Uncle Will saw all the commotion from his rocking chair out
under the pecan tree in his front yard, so he came down in the
pasture to see what was going on. The stings were really causing
pain by that time. Uncle Will always had a big cud of Beechnut
chewing tobacco and he immediately applied a wad of chewing
tobacco to the stings. It gave us some relief but the stings
still hurt.
Uncle Will offered us all a chew of Beechnut and said, "By Dogs,
boys you oughtin mess with those hornets". You know, he was
right... and my mother's advice still rings true.
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