4-Plex – Bees

Part 2 of a 5-part series… (read Part 1)

This is a continuation of the story about the 4-plex we owned in Austin, TX. The one with the crystal meth.

Same property. Different day.

Bees

I got a call from the tenant in unit A.¹ He said there were a lot of bees outside the main entrance and I should come take care of it because it was dangerous, especially for the kids.

Nice of him to let me know.

I hopped in the car, stopped by Home Depot on the way and purchased a can of Raid. I made sure I got the one with the 12-foot spray nozzle. I grew up in Oklahoma with wasps. I know how this works. The key is to maintain your distance. The cans with the mist nozzles are for risk-lovers.

Before I arrived, I sort of envisioned a dozen bees buzzing around some blooming flowers.²

When I arrived, I saw perhaps several hundred more bees than I expected. I cracked my window an inch and began to wonder if there were other ways into the car, like through the ventilation or something. I turned the A/C fan off, just in case, and spent a moment looking around and thinking of ways they might flank me. I got myself so worked up with nervous energy thinking about bees getting in the car that I was on high alert. There were that many bees buzzing about.

Ready. Aim. Fire.³

In my nervousness, instead of hitting a bee, I sprayed the inside of the window and the Raid splattered back all over me and ran down the inside of my car. Lucky, because that’s when I saw the larger swarm stuck to the side of the building about 10 feet away. A BIG ball of bees. Much larger than a basketball. Thousands and thousands of bees! Window up!

It was precisely at this moment my wife (Sofie) called, causing my cell phone to vibrate and buzz in my front right pocket. For half a second, I flailed around in the car, slapping my crotch, thinking… “How did they get in my pants?!?”. The timing.

It’s good to know when problems exceed our ability to resolve them by ourselves.

I called a bee keeper. He arrived and estimated 30,000 bees in the swarm. I got lucky on this one.

But hey, relative to crystal meth, this problem seemed more manageable.

Read Part 3 – grow lights, spy cameras & electricity theft

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FOOTNOTES:

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1. Incidentally, tenants don’t normally call to tell you good news.
2. Not that there were any flowers near this place.
3. To this day, I’m not sure why I thought the can of Raid with the stream nozzle would help at this point. Like I was going to hit them midair as they buzzed by, gangster style… say hello to my little friend.