Doesn't quite have the impact of "I shot an elephant in my pajamas today", but it's the best I could come up with. First, the Yellow-jacket’s perspective.
It was a beautiful late-summer morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise. My sisters and I (all eighty-three of us) decided to get out of the nest early for our daily foraging. We knew of some luscious rotten apples laying on the ground not too far away.
Any foraging trip may have certain hazards. Crossing roads can be very dangerous because fast-moving machines can smash into us as we're flying by. Humans, large, disgusting creatures, sometimes swat at us (we just get out of the way and then buzz them a few times), but sometimes spray some terrible stuff at us to knock us down and kill us. Crossing over the Lester Rail Trail is usually not a hazard, because the humans moving on it are usually slow-moving and don't bother us. But today was different.
I was leading the group across the trail on our way to the apples. Suddenly I heard, "Gertrude, LOOK OUT!!". It was my sisters warning me, but it was too late. One of the slow-moving (certainly no faster than most) humans on the trail had come along and I somehow (don't ask me to explain it) got sucked between its skin and its garment. I was scared, confused, and a little angry. So I did what any self-respecting yellow-jacket would do: I lowered my stinger. In that split second, I managed to find a great spot. It was on a soft, damp furry area, just on the edge of a darker, hairless area that had a bump in the middle.
Then, and I realize that this is hard to believe, I felt strong pressure from the other side of the garment, and I was pulled away from the skin. I saw a huge, ugly face looking down at me. Gave me the willies, but I was too concerned about getting crushed. I managed to wiggle out to freedom. That was a close one. I somehow made it back to the nest, where my sisters took care of me. We're all vowing a jihad for revenge.
Now the human side:
The good thing about starting at eleven minutes a mile: When you ratchet down to nine or eight, it feels like you're flying. The bad part? By the time you ratchet your pace down, a whole lot of time has gone by.
Why so slow to start? Because it was extremely dark and scary out there on the Lester Rail Trail at 5:15 am. Good thing I didn't start any earlier. The plan was to do the 6-mile round trip four times, getting a bit faster with each one. And to hopefully do the last few miles at better than 7-minute pace.
After the first extremely slow loop, the sun began to rise and I started out again. About half-way, I felt a sudden stinging sensation on my chest, under my singlet. Not much pain for a half-second, then, EEEEEEEK!, did it hurt! I grabbed at my singlet and figured out that I had somehow acquired a yellow-jacket and somehow got it out of the singlet after only half-squashing it. Luckily I'm not allergic to those stings, but as it was, my breast swelled up a bit and continued to hurt. Hey - this may be the next big thing: a new "natural" method of breast enlargement.
I somehow managed to get through the other two and a half loops. Each one did get faster, but I never got anywhere near 7-minute pace. Gonna have to work on that.
Six-mile Splits:
58:49 (it was dark)
50:47 (big bad sting)
49:40
47:42 (finish in 3:27)
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