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Stung in the helmet

Started by Norton Canes, September 19, 2018, 10:50:48 AM

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Norton Canes

I was on my bike. A wasp came straight for me. It got in through one of the air vents - one moment everything was fine then I heard a furious trapped buzzing next to my head, I veered to a sudden halt and undid the straps but it was too late, the panic-stricken insect had thrust its sting into my skin. It was exactly like someone pressing the tip of a sewing needle into my head.

I guess it must have been a wasp because it didn't leave the sting embedded, and a bumblebee would have been too big to get through the air vent. Had to cycle the rest of the way home helmetless due to the increasing pain. When I got in I applied ice and took an antihistamine. Because I haven't been stung since I was a child I was worried that there might be some kind of prophylactic shock but fortunately the discomfort was limited to mild swelling.

Anyone else been stung in unusual circumstances? Perhaps you'd just finished some campanology and were stung at the bell end.

Alton Towers. I strayed too near to the bins with a coke in my hand. One landed on the rim as I took a sip, I thought it was a bit of litter on the breeze and flicked it, and it stung my lip. Least I flicked the cunt though.

buzby

Quote from: Norton Canes on September 19, 2018, 10:50:48 AM
Because I haven't been stung since I was a child I was worried that there might be some kind of prophylactic shock
You were worried you might have a potentially fatal allergy to condoms?

Norton Canes

Someone told me that wasps are particularly irascible at the moment because they're all pissed up on the large amount of decomposing/fermenting fruit lying on the ground.

Depressed Beyond Tables

I had an incident with a wasp just the other week. It didn't end well for either party.

kittens

people act like getting stung by a wasp or bee is the worst thing in the world when it's actually pretty good

Attila

As a little kid: there was a wonderful crab-apple tree in our front garden that was great for climbing. There was one particularly bent branch that was perfect to sit on and enjoy the view.

One Saturday, my parents were unwitting and unwilling baby-sitters to one of my classmates: child's parents had a habit of going out and spending a long, leisurely, hyperactive-kid-free Saturday by getting Jeannie to phone up a friend and go over to that friend's house to play. No one realised this immediately, but this is some context for the story.

Anyway, she and I are having a whale of a time playing that morning, running around the fields and woods around the house, and ending up in this crab apple tree. I'm sat on my fave branch; she's on an equally comfy branch above me, yelling her head off with whatever nonsense we were doing (we were both about 7 or 8), and banging on a nearby branch with a stick. It's all laughs, except I thought I had a stray branch or leaf caught in my hair and absently kept trying to brush it away.

Turns out that a hiveful of paperwasps also thought the crab apple was a great tree, and had built a fuck-off huge nest near to my sitting branch, not immediately noticeable as it was full summer, and it was somewhat hidden by leaves and the angle of the other branches. Judging the size of it, my dad figured that the wasps had been perfectly happy to share the tree with me since all I ever did was climb up to my branch and sit there happily waving to my dog or reading a book or whatever. Jeannie was a force of nature, an absolute storm of energy, and yeah -- perhaps banging on the branches with her stick as if she were playing the Anvil Chorus didn't sit right with the wasps. What I thought was a leaf or a branch poking at my hair was an advance scout trying to nudge me along.

They got me on my hands and on the side of my head; I'd no fucking idea what was going on, as their stings can be like getting a strong electrical shock -- fell out of the tree and went screaming towards the house.

I'm not allergic, thank fuck, but my left hand swelled up painfully and hurt all the way up to my shoulder, nasty headache set in, plus the shock and fright of wasps and that (I was pretty scared of them as a little kid). So my mom tended to me, then gently suggested to Jeannie that she call her mum and get her to come take her home. That's when my parents learned about Jeannie's parents being away til much later that night and no way to contact them (this would have been around 1973). Jeannie also continued to nag me to play with her despite the fact I was in serious pain and felt quite ill from the stings and the shock.

So, yeah -- I've been stung since (and grumpy, dozy wasps in November/December can been a real treat, too), and currently I have to dodge wasps when I tidy up and restock the hedgehog party palace in the evenings, but there's nothing like multiple stings on your hands and head + an annoying friend who keeps yelling in your face that you're her host and you have to play with her. Magical!



king_tubby

As I mentioned in the wasp thread last week, I have been stung right on the fucking nuts by one of the stripey bastards.

Norton Canes

Oh shit, did you start a wasp thread? Sorry.

Buelligan

Stung in the helmet a couple of times at top speed on the old motorcycles also, in the hand when swiftly grasping plump grapes during the vendange.  I hold nothing against the little fellas, they are just doing their piece.

king_tubby


Emma Raducanu

I've been stung on 3 seperate occasions. All really unremarkable and I've no fear of wasps or bees.

My brother-in-law however walks his dog along by a river, ending up quite far from civilisation. His dog is a perpeptual child, running, jumping, adventuring and once distrubed a wasps nest. Apparantly resulting in a full on swarm, surrounding my brother-in-law. He had to go to hospital after being stung something like 30 times and the long walk back was agony. He said it wasn't very nice.

Dex Sawash

Couple weeks back, was scooping leaves out of neglected uncovered boat in back yard. Had been a bit too long between leaf-scoopings I suppose and yellow jackets had built a nest in the decaying detritus. Swarmed up my shorts and shirt. Couple dozen stings. Did the running away while stripping naked and waving arms wildly thing right past wife watching through kitchen window. Got inside "not this again, we've talked about it"

Didn't put it in the wasp thread because I don't know if ground-nesting yellow jackets are a kind of wasp or not and didn't want to derail the thread.

Buelligan

Yep.  That simply doesn't count that, Dex.  I hope you won't embarrass yourself and us  by mentioning it again.

BTW, for anyone who has genuinely been stung by an actual wasp, you may find it useful to note that the simple application of any sort of vinegar (balsamic is obviously best if you're middle class) will ameliorate your symptoms.  Not you though Dex.

Neville Chamberlain

The only time I was stung by a wasp was when I was playing tennis.

A lesson for us all there, I think.

Endicott

Quote from: buzby on September 19, 2018, 11:07:57 AM
You were worried you might have a potentially fatal allergy to condoms?

To be fair, finding out about an allergy to condoms whilst out on one's bike is probably preferable to finding out in almost any other situation.

Endicott

Quote from: Norton Canes on September 19, 2018, 10:50:48 AM
I guess it must have been a wasp because it didn't leave the sting embedded, and a bumblebee would have been too big to get through the air vent.

Many bees are little, and solitary. And I think the breaking off of the stinger is an old wives tale.[1]



[1] but I can't be arsed to check

Buelligan

Quote from: Endicott on September 19, 2018, 12:56:39 PM
To be fair, finding out about an allergy to condoms whilst out on one's bike is probably preferable to finding out in almost any other situation.

Anyone and everyone's bike would be worse, surely?

king_tubby

Quote from: Neville Chamberlain on September 19, 2018, 12:54:50 PM
The only time I was stung by a wasp was when I was playing tennis.

A lesson for us all there, I think.

Naked tennis? Like old Enid Blytons?

Neville Chamberlain

Let's just say it was very much a case of "New balls, please!"

Buelligan

A tube of new balls.   If it's tennis, it's a tube.

Endicott


Neville Chamberlain


Norton Canes

Quote from: Endicott on September 19, 2018, 12:58:50 PM
Many bees are little, and solitary. And I think the breaking off of the stinger is an old wives tale.[1]



[1] but I can't be arsed to check

I did a Wiki and it said that unlike bumblebees honey bees have barbed stings, which is why they can't pull them out.

phes

Picked up the toilet roll this morning and a wasp crawled out onto my hand. Took the opportunity to shit myself. Thirty odd years of peering into toilet rolls lies ahead *sigh*

Shit Good Nose

I am disappoint that the thread title did not deliver what I was expecting...


I was stung on/in the forehead when a jasper got into my (head) helmet whilst cycling home from work a couple of summers ago.  By the time I got home it looked like I had a massive boil on my head.  No other problems or lasting effects though, luckily.

I have never been stung on the balls or the (cock) helmet, although when I was a child I did once (accidentally) step on a bee that was on the floor of our caravan in the south of France and its stinger went in my right big toe.  Swelled up like mental and I couldn't walk on it for a couple of days.  Poor little devil didn't make it, of course, suffering the double blow of sacrificing its life for a sting AND being stood on by an oafish child foreign.

Attila

Few years back, one of the rare times I was helping Mr Attila down in his allotment; digging through the big pile of compost he'd had brewing for a while. I had boxed myself in a corner, me and the compost, my way back into the garden part semi-blocked by a wheelbarrow.

Dug up a nest of ground wasps -- little fuckers looked to me like tiny bumble bees so when they landed on my legs, I thought, how bizarre, I didn't know bumbles flocked. Then they started to sting me. Without thinking, I went to whack them with the shovel -- I probably did more damage to my shins with the shovel than the wasps did, as they just fucked off.

Dex's ground wasp story reminds me: When I had my house in Virginia, there was a brood of ground-wasps living in a nest in the one cleared spot of back lawn behind the house (the rest of the property was wooded). Awesome every year for the first mow of the year forgetting they were there; my ex came barreling into the house one spring day covered in the little fuckers, all stuck in his hair, down his clothes; he just jumped straight into the shower. to rinse them off.

The dogs constantly pestered them, as well.