I walked back into the winery after my lunch break. The temperature outside was a lovely 88 degrees and I was thinking how much better the air felt than it did a couple of weeks ago when afternoon temperatures hovered in the 100’s. I punched in at the time clock and then headed to my office.
Passing Gerry’s office I let her know that I was back from lunch. Passing the lab, our winemaker was taking a break from the bottling line. We were bottling the 2011 Chardonnay. I got to my office and looked briefly over the project I was working on, and decided to make a side trip to the rest room so that I would not break my concentration over the numbers I would be pouring over.
I emerged from the bathroom and glanced over at the workers who were busily at their stations along the line, and then headed upstairs. I got back into my office, headed towards my chair, and as my rear end descended to the seat of the chair I noticed this huge black and yellow creature on my left inside thigh, close to my crotch! It was huge! Think about the size of a Kennedy half dollar! It was the biggest bumblebee I have ever seen in my life and it was attached to my jeans!
Last year I had a run in with a much smaller version of this creature and managed to be stung 5 times, realizing that these creatures have no barb on their stinger. So here I am half way down to the seat of the chair frozen in time! I pushed the chair back and still in this position, which I now realize resembled someone having ridden a horse for 30 hours, I gingerly walked out of my office over to the winemaker’s lab.
The winemaker looked up as I opened the door, standing there is a halfway sitting position, as I screamed “Get it off of me!”
The response came with a smile on the face because I did look quite ridiculous, and the winemaker had not seen the cause of my anxiety yet. “Get what off you Barb?”
Not wanting to move much, I pointed at the area where Mr. Bumble was making itself comfortable. The winemaker pushed his glasses up his nose to get a better look at the area where this thing hung close to you know where, when of course someone had to walk by the door seeing the winemaker looking like he was inspecting my crotch! “What the hell is that?”
“The biggest bumblebee I have ever seen in my life! Get the f***ing thing off of me!”
The winemaker starts looking around his lab for something to use to extricate this thing, and grabs a broom and a dustpan.
“BEEE careful!” I yelled, “They sting multiple times!”
Smaller version of the offender!
Slowly he approached, asking me to bring my legs out more so that he could get to the area. Viciously he attacked, striking at the offender again, and again and again, all the time with me screaming. Folks were starting to notice that something was not right upstairs and came to the bottom of the stairs to see what was going on. Now can you just imagine this picture? Me screaming and the winemaker “sweeping” my crotch area with a broom?
I went into paroxysms of hysterical laughter combined with a bad case of Turrets syndrome as the winemaker kept trying to sweep this creature, who would not let go, off of me! Finally the bumbler dropped to the ground! I jumped back still suffering from the above affliction as I watched the winemaker wail on the downed bumblebee.
Finally it was over! I went back into my office as the winemaker walked down the stairs with the offender on the topside of the broom.
When he came into my office, I thanked him profusely! He told me his first thought when he saw this thing was that it was a black widow! A black widow? We have those? Uh oh!
Life in the Foothills 