I cursed the bee under my breath and brushed his corpse off my heel, and that’s when I noticed the hole he’d crawled out of, in the middle of the pile of dirt upset by my feet, and the other holes around it, all teeming with other bees newly incensed by my presence.

It was their nest, I realized, and I’d crushed it with my thumping foot. I’d run right into their hive, I’d killed one of their brothers, and now they were angry.

Now, I should pause to point out that this is one of the many ways in which humanity is no match for nature: there are fucking underground beehives. As in, bees that live in the fucking ground. I’d also like to take this moment to formally accuse Winnie the Pooh of failing to prepare me for this phenomenon. Thanks to Winnie, I’d spent years going about life assuming delicious honey-producing beehives were found exclusively aboveground, and I fully blame him for my ignorance on this subject. But it took only a few moments for me to draw a few clear conclusions about underground beehives, or rather, one very important conclusion: underground beehives do not like getting stepped on. In fact, they very much dislike getting stepped on, so much so that when they are stepped on, they happen to overreact and, despite their trespasser’s loud and fervent attempts at de-escalation, attack accordingly.

The bees rose up in unison and set about swarming not just me, but all of us children, in retaliation. Sure, I was the one who had destroyed their nest, but they attacked us all without asking questions. Our parents watched from afar as we all came screaming back to the house, bringing the swarm with us, wailing like mad as the cloud of bees chased after us. The bees stung and bit any exposed limb with impunity as we ran, our arms flailing, swinging whatever objects we could to knock out as many bees as possible at once. When we reached the house, everybody scrambled indoors, yelping at the final stings, swinging away the most committed soldiers.

Inside, the house became a full-blown triage unit, like the kind you see in movies about the Civil War, with soldiers lying in filthy beds, biting into chunks of wood while nurses saw off their exploded legs. All of us children collapsed onto the ground in various states of panic and pain, cries and screams piercing the air. It was utter madness.