Thursday, August 26, 2010

Fear: Hornets are Dangerous


The Norwegian Hornet, which usually is called Wasp

Ever since I was a kid I had this fear of hornets, not because I had heard that it would really hurt if one got stung, but because I had this deep feeling inside me that these small aggressive bugs had the ability to kill, that even one or two of them could be dangerous.

Back then I did not know anything about allergies, and that it was possible to be deadly allergic to something, I grew up dealing with hornets every summer, but never got stung, and as I grew older I learned to control my fear, even to be able to study them as they fly their way from flower to flower, or landed on my arm or jacket for a while before heading back to their busy day collecting and building their hive.

Then when I was 20 I was stung by one for the first time while picking up some dry branches searching for rare mushroom for a biology class, it made me feel woozy, lightheaded and, weak until the next day but nothing more came out of it, I did know now that the first sting usually never trigger a severe allergic response and that this would not be the time to confirm or disprove my long fear of the deadliness of hornets stings.


Dividalen in Troms, Norway

The real test came about two years later, I was again out on a full week biology field trip collecting rare plants, mosses and grasses for a higher botanical diversity class, way up in the mountains in Dividalen, close to Tromsø. On the second day we went up and I started feeling strange, a hornet had somehow gotten caught underneath my shirt and my backpack, stinging me in the lower end of my spine. As we continued up I noticed my eyesight started to go blurred, and the eyes was no longer able to adjust to direct sunlight, since we were already high up in the mountains, with no way of contacting anybody with use of cellphone since there was no coverage of the area, I figured it would not let the others know that I was not doing to well.

We continued ascending up to the top, and as we were getting ready to return back to the camp we had made up at the summit, my heart beat was starting to slow down dangerously low. Still I managed to will myself to placing my feet in-front of the other one step at the time. I even lost balance one place but since the forest was so dense none of the others noticed, I got up and continued walking, supporting myself on one tree at the time, I looked down and noticed I had a twig half an inch thick standing out of my upper thigh, I felt no pain, so I went ahead and pulled it out, there was no blood and no pain, most of my concentration was at this point focused on keeping my heart beat from slowing even more down, and making sure I was not lagging too far behind the others, only one guy was behind so I knew I was not last.. yet.

Finally we all got out of the dense forest, and I asked one of the other girls to check my back for me, it was totally swollen from my tail bone all the way up to the top of my neck, making me look like I was hunchbacked. At this point it had been about 6 hours since I was stung, and I was starting to feel better again, so there was no need to cancel the field trip because of a few minor bruises, the wound in my thigh had closed up and I decided to go to sleep to the next day to see if the swelling had gone down. The very next morning the swelling was almost totally gone, only a few months later did I tell them how sick I had actually been on the field trip.

This is just one of many personal warnings that I have received and so far all of them have held true when it comes to things that are of danger, of use or of danger to those close to me, keeping myself and others safe both from internal and external dangers.

-------------------------------------------------
Remember to check out our Paranormal Corner Online Store and if you have story you would like us to look into for posting in our blog contact us at waikikiblogboi@gmail.com
-------------------------------------------------

No comments:

Post a Comment

World