Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A Whole New World...

Well… I now know that my life is truly different than it was 9 weeks ago… turns out we had a snake back behind our building; and, because it’s a slow day everyone had to go look at the snake, of course. So we’re all (and I do mean all – you’d have thought it was a goober convention) outside watching this racer snake hanging out on the tree limb of the dogwood behind the building. It was such a pretty little snake (if there is such a thing), and it’s such a nice day out that you would have thought it was something right out of National Geographic… but then someone (me) realized that we’re in the South and decided it would be a good idea to throw a pine cone at the snake. (Yes… I’m that smart)

So I pick up a pine cone and toss it at said snake. And dang… for a girl… I can throw! Bulls eye!!! That snake turned its pretty little head and looked right at me. If he could talk I know he would have been saying “hey lady… I’m hanging out here… what gives?” or something like that. But other than look at me, nothing happens. So, even though I’m terrified of snakes, I’m kind of disappointed. I mean, seriously, I would have thought that my bull’s eye throw would have knocked that snake’s world and sent him at least chasing something! So I lean down to get another pine cone and hear someone behind me doing the yippee dance of someone being bombarded by something… I look up in time to see Laura, our sales support fabulous wonderstar, dancing in place because something had bitten her. Right about that time, the Mensa convention of genius minds that had gathered to watch a snake in the back realized that they were standing in the middle of a ground hornet’s nest! Oh my Gosh… you’d have thought we all lost our minds. Now when I write this next part… I want you to envision a classroom of three year olds screaming and jumping and running like little mad men… We all start running towards the back door of the building… every one of us whooping and dancing so as not to attract the bees (yeah… that totally works). Everyone except Will and me makes it in okay, and then the mad rush of angry bees makes a whoosh.

I manage to make it into the building but because LA had bees up her pants, she had stopped in the middle of the MuniScan office and started stripping down. Paige calls out to Will “Don’t come in ‘cuz LA’s takin’ her pants off”. So Will’s stuck outside with the bees and finally he decides to run to the front of the building to come in the front door. I’m trying to breathe because LA’s antics are cracking me up – even though in the back of my mind I’m wondering and hoping that she’s not allergic to bees. I hear Laura ask Paige for a cigarette and that was just enough to make me lose it completely… it was all too surreal and too funny. (The cigarette was not to smoke, of course, it was to use the tobacco to draw out the poison from the sting – but it was great timing).

All said and done, LA got stung like 5 times on her legs and hand and Laura got stung once on her ankle. We had to call Mr. Jimmy to let him know about the nest – and Lord don’t you know him listening to the story of how we found it had to be kind of funny. I stuck my head out around the corner a few minutes ago to see if the bees were still in a tizzy… and they were calmed down by then, but that snake was still up in his branch just hanging out, enjoying the sunshine. I think he might have gotten the last laugh on this one!

This would never have happened at my old job... we would have had a procedure in place for how to handle a snake in a tree!

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