Head to the shade!

So there's a funny story that goes along with this picture. Right now it's a 'ha ha funny' but at the time it was 'what were you thinking but I'm glad you're all okay' type of funny.

We went up to the cabin over the weekend. If you get the chance to hang out in Driggs, ID I highly recommend it. Next to the cabin there was a new field of sunflowers that we thought would make an excellent backdrop for some family pictures. So we trudged down the road, camera in hand, to get the perfect shot.

Also of note, there had been several beehives in the field on the other side of the fence that the farmer had moved earlier in the day. I'd seen the hives there the day before, but since they were gone I didn't think anything else of it, certainly not that I'd soon have lots of curious visitors that wanted their picture taken as well.

Nat's grandma took Reed to stand by the creek for the first picture. I took the shot, checked the screen that it looked okay, and handed the camera to Julia to get ready for the next shot. As I looked at Reed I noticed a bee walking on his shirt collar, and like a slow-motion flash where you have a perfect awareness of your surroundings, I saw dozens of bees instantly materialize out of thin air to descend upon us, and then all heck broke loose.

With a warcry of "BEEEEEEEEZ!" I ran up to grab Reed, started swatting the bees off him and took off running toward the fence. Nat's grandma started squealing and swatting her face and hair, and before I even made it to the fence 20 feet away she'd exclaimed that she'd been bitten twice. Picture in your head sweet little grandma Jean quietly complaining, "oh, I just got bitten again").

Natalie shoved Julia through the fence towards the safety of...honestly there wasn't any place that didn't have bees flying around it, so we all started up the road to the cabin. A neighbor (Gary Lebaron) was there shouting for us to "head to the shade, head towards the shade!" which I thought was a strange idea, but it's funny to hear the home remedies that people come up with in a pinch.

Nat was dancing down the road with at least one bee in her hair, and ended up running into the shade. And guess what the bee did once she got in the shade, absolutely nothing. I had to hand Reed off and go get the bee out of her hair.

Reed was the most upset because a bee had been crawling inside his ear, and when it came out onto his cheek the easiest thing to do was smash and kill the bee which startled him even more to the point where he cried for the next two hours.

Somehow, nobody but grandma Jean had been stung, and she about four or five times.

As we drove away from the cabin later that afternoon we were escorted down the road by dozens of bees. Honestly I don't know how we didn't see the bees before jumping the fence, I think they were laying in wait for the ambush.

I've circled all the bees that I could find on the original picture, including the one on Reed's shirt.