On How I Ended Up Daylight Public Pant-less

When we began to discuss the job in Arizona, a lot of the discussion had to do with not so much the pit in the yard that the meter is housed in, but the critters that are the pit's inhabitants. 

Some of these potential monsters:

• black widow spiders
• brown recluses
• snakes, to include rattlesnakes
• Gila monsters 

A few weeks ago in Birmingham, Michigan, as the impending project was discussed, full-grown man and plumber, Todd Tinker (yes, his real name!) said he was researching some sort of pesticide bomb on the internet that could be thrown into the pit to kill anything that might be lurking in the shadows. I knew I would have nothing to do with this.

I was the voice of reason in this discussion and basically said, "Hey, look guys- let's just get there and see what the situation is. Maybe it won't be that bad..."

 And I'm really glad i didn't freak out too much because today was our first day of work and it just wasn't that bad. All I saw was one scary spider and plenty of ants. 

Then this evening, on the way home from a long day of semi-manual labor in the sun, my skin caked with desert dust, fifteen minutes into my 20 minute commute, I felt a piercing pain in my inner thigh. I slapped at it and the pain intensified. It felt like someone was holding a match to my skin. I smacked and smacked and the car swerved and I looked down at my lap to see a black bee curled up. I'm completely bewildered and horrified and screaming in pain at this point. Did you know a bee sting hurts that bad!? I had no idea! 

All day long, with my BARE HANDS, I invaded the dark and foreboding homes of POISONOUS SPIDERS, POISONOUS LIZARDS, AND SCORPIONS only to be excruciatingly stung by a bee THROUGH MY JEANS in my car.

The car swerved and I screamed and Kady repeated over and over helplessly, "I don't know what to do I don't know what to do I don't know what to do!"

I swerved left across three lanes of traffic and squealed to a stop on a residential street right off the main county highway near our house and jumped out of the car in tears dropping my pants to the ground.

"I'm sorry!" I yelled to the joggers and commuters, "I'm sorry!"