Everyone I know laughs about how stinging objects have sought me out my entire life. I have been stung by wasps dozens of times. It always hurt, but that was about it. Eight years ago I was mowing when something stung me just below the knee on the back of my leg. It felt like someone stuck an icepick in the back of my leg, but I never saw it. About ten days later I was mowing in the same place and I got stung again in almost exactly the same spot on my leg. This time it felt like I got shot. It hurt so bad I would have screamed the same profanities if Mother Teresa and Billy Graham had been standing beside me.

This time my upper calf got very red and swollen. By the next day the redness and swelling had moved around to the front of my knee. I went to my doctor. She gave me a shot of some kind and an antibiotic, and said the main thing I needed to do was make sure it didn't happen again, especially near my head. I had never had a reaction anything like that.

A year or so ago a red wasp stung me on the forearm, and my arm got swollen from that, too. Apparently I have developed an allergic reaction as I got older.

By the way, a few days after the second sting from what I am sure were yellowjackets I saw that something had dug up the ground right where I was stung and the honeycomb looking nest was on the surface and torn up. If I could find the raccoon who dug up and ate those $*&@!+?s I would treat him to a crawfish dinner and pin a medal on his chest.