I pissed off mother nature today

Pretty sure I did, anyway.

Remember those beautiful, twisty hickory and oak trees that loom(ed) over my house? What with all the hullaballoo of tropical storms and winds and whatnot up here, the other half was getting pretty nervous about an exceptionally large, gravity-defying 60,000 lb hickory that would obliterate the master wing of our house if it succumbed to gravity. Which, I'm pretty sure, it eventually would have.

So as much as it sickens me to do so, I had to hire a crew to come in and dead-wood the back yard (which was raining big branches every time the wind blew), and take down the most precarious tree on the lot. A few others got serious haircuts too. I was very apprehensive about doing this, being that I'm one of those people who believe that nature is a living thing, and there's some collective conscious involved even though we don't tend to see plants as sentient.

The first thing that happened was that the crew (about 6 guys armed with chainsaws) discovered a large nest of something living underground very close to the deck. And by something, I mean a hive of angry, buzzing, extremely aggressive stinging things. Wasps or something. Not exactly sure what they are yet, but the bug people are coming tomorrow to figure it out and hopefully take care of it.

And when I say the crew found this hive, I mean they were in the process of scaling the tree nearby and they stirred it up and the creatures came after everybody in the yard. I was inside the house without a clue that this was happening. Apparently one guy on the crew got stung about 3 times and knew he had an allergy, so the boss took him to the hospital, where, sure enough, his eyes swelled shut and his throat closed and it was a very lucky thing he was already in the hospital. A few others were stung 5 - 7 times. I went back there later in the day, and although I gave the hive a wide berth, they still figured me out and chased me out of the yard.

So, I ask myself, is this revenge?

Maybe.

We haven't even taken the big tree down yet. That's tomorrow. I shudder to think...I think I'll just stay inside all day.