Yesterday I went out harvesting blackberries with C—. The summer has been hot, but also wet, so they are positively bursting off of the bushes. We brought the dogs as well, though they promptly vanished to go find running water to get soaked in.

We were climbing through the bushes, gathering as many ripe berries as we could easily reach before moving on to the next bush. It felt so opulant, having that many bushes all so laden with berries. I felt a bit like a disaffected billionaire, as I would gaze at a bush and see so many perfect berries just beyond my reach — then yawn and move on to another, lazier bush instead of putting in the modicum of effort it would have taken to harvest one bush entirely.

About twenty minutes into our berry hunt I felt a sharp pain on my lower leg. Sharp. Very sharp. My first thought was that it was a berry bush, reaching out with its thorny limbs to take some retribution on me for stealing its lucious fruit. A moment of reflection belied that, however, since this pain was absolutely excruciating.

The mystery didn’t last very long, as I suddenly noticed a bee had landed on my arm and was climbing up the arm of my shirt. It was quickly gone from view, and I was terrified of moving, lest it be frightened and sting me. I needn’t have worried, as a mere second or two after I first saw it a plunging pain tore through my arm.

Something was definitely amiss.

Either I was doing something tragically misguided, or bees as a whole had decided they just didn’t like the look of me.

I was doing something approaching yelling at this point, and C— had come over to help me out. She pointed out to me that there was a swarm of bees under me and on me, and that it appeared I was standing on a bee hive.

Never a good idea.

I started to make my way away from the bee hive at a somewhat accelerated speed, stopping only to stare in shock at a bee that had its ass stuck in my arm and was wiggling frantically trying to escape. Now, I’m a compassionate individual, and under ordinary circumstances I would have been rooting for it, but this situation left me unsure how I should feel about its well-being.

C— pointed out I should probably not just be standing still, however, so I kept fleeing. We made it out with a not-unreasonable amount of bee stings, and luckily neither of us were allergic, so all ended well. She is my knight in shining armor, having taken severe battle wounds trying to help me out, and I swoon even at the memory of her heroism.

One of the funnier parts of this for me was that the first thought I had once I realized what was going on (that bees were impaling themselves in me at a frenzied rate) was that I would now be able to write accurately about it in future fiction. I like that this was my first thought. It makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

So, that was my fun with bees. No real message, except to watch where you’re putting your feet when picking blackberries. Sometimes they have allies to fight back for them.