Alex, exhausted from 6 days without enough sleep and memories of the yellow jacket attack, freaked out at ANY flying bug or speck of dust that flew within two feet of her. She was panicked and seemingly terrified beyond all logic. This child, not even afraid of injections, horrified by any little thing flying nearby.
After explaining reality, “Yes, bees sting. It’s not likely that you’ll get stung – you might, but not likely. You’re missing all the fun. I’m sure the bees won’t ‘bug’ you,” she didn’t see the humor. And, as sincerely as I tried, she was not at all comforted by logic or soothing words.
Nope. She was still horrified and hysterical. See for yourself….,
At this point she was beyond consoling. I took her away from the beach area – as much to get her away from the bugs as to stop myself from drowning her & stop the wailing.
I took her to the picnic table, covered her in t-shirts to ‘protect her’ and told her that I was off to talk with the Queen Bee to “work something out.” As I left she started SCREAMING again and didn’t want to be left alone.
Less than a minute later I returned and explained my ‘deal’ with the Queen Bee. “The Queen agreed to talk to her kids and tell them not to sting if Alex would stop screaming and scaring her kids. In exchange,” I explained to Alex, “I promised the Queen that we would leave a small bowl of sugar on the deck for her later that day as a thank you.”
Well, this was agreeable to Alex and off she went to have fun in the water with the rest of her cousins like nothing ever happened.
Five hours later, as the girls were getting ready for bed, Alex reminded me about our deal with the Queen. We prepared a special bowl of sugar as promised and left it on the deck for a royal midnight snack.
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