The days were warming, Lana was getting stronger and more confident and the daily walks became walks to the paddock where we would leave her for increasing amounts of time until eventually she was spending a good proportion of the day mooching around in the company of the sheep and chickens. It was all becoming very natural and each day we felt more optimistic for her and gradually allowed our emotional guards to lower. Lana was eating well, now enjoying her calf feed as well as the hay, but still very much attached to her bottle. The bottle would actually be a small bone of contention between Kelly and I and it would be some time before I could actually wean Kelly off from giving Lana her milk. It did get reduced from thrice daily to twice, to the eventual once, but getting that once daily cancelled took a little bit of work, and I can tell you the complaints from both Kelly and Lana were quite vociferous.
Eventually we left Lana out overnight for the first time. It was a bit of a nervous wrench and I don’t think either Kelly or I slept well that night – we actually slept in the cabin so that we could have an ear close to her paddock should Lana start to panic. But it was absolutely the right time and most definitely in Lana’s interests. In all honesty I don’t think that Lana cottoned onto the fact that anything substantially had changed, as with so much in her short life she took it as it came.
With the better weather I was spending more time outside trying to improve the sanctuary. Good weather is so precious to us to crack on and effectively prepare for the autumn and winter, so any opportunity that I have I’m preparing shelters, enclosures and fencing and in those spring days I was working a lot on the vegetable beds as well, keen to make us as self-sufficient for our fresh vegetables and fruit for the animals as we possibly could be. Often whilst I was out I would take Lana from the paddocks so that she could enjoy the longer, richer grass that grew unmolested by the sheep, ponies and goats. I loved to walk her out of her gate and lead her to near where I was working, slip off her halter and allow her to just enjoy her freedom. She would always sniff the air in curiosity to make sense of her surroundings, then inevitably calmly lower her head to the ground and the still dew moist grass. For the next few hours we would share the space together. I would work away and keep a half eye on her movements – which tended to be slow and uneventful, often she would snack and then just slump down happily in the long grass. Quite frankly it was idyllic and I treasured the moments, silently applauding myself for my fortune and for being able to give Lana these special times.
Of course I was inevitably setting myself up, and unfortunately Lana too, for a fall. No matter how many times it happens, I am still vulnerable to applauding my own qualities, only to be reminded that they really are nothing to be applauded.
It was a really glorious morning, warm and sunny and my responsibilities for the day lay with the sanctuary and garden and not with any outside engagements. After all the morning feed chores I collected Lana and brought her up to where I would be working on a new chicken run – the bane of our life in regards to all our feathered residents is the now inevitable housing restrictions that are called at various times of the year by DEFRA in response to a heightened avian flu outbreak. We had just opened the doors again for the mixed flock to enjoy the freedom of free ranging and I was determined to improve on their runs for when they would be called back inside whenever that would be in the forthcoming months.
As usual Lana was calm and lowered her head to graze a few steps from where I would be working. It was a little further up than normal and I didn’t really think twice about it. I got to work and she meandered slowly and contentedly. Every now and again I would check on her and she would be perfectly in range, safe and unworried.
Then I noticed her wandering ever so slowly to the top of the field, still only a few yards from myself, but ambling in a semi-purposeful manner. I wasn’t really concerned as I felt confident in Lana turning to my voice and maybe I couldn’t outrun her, but I could usually get to her quicker than she could get away from me. Then I realised that she was nearing the beehives. I have two beehives, though one is a spare in case I need to split the hive. I was still very new at beekeeping and hadn’t had any success other than I was pleased that spring to have gotten the colony through the winter despite losing half of them to swarming the previous summer. I looked at Lana and assessed the danger of her getting too close to the bees. It was fine I concluded, there was still some distance, she would undoubtedly meander away and settle on some tasty pasture at her feet. Besides the hives were on a sturdy raised base which she would feel first before coming upon the bees themselves. However, it was a danger, so I resolved to collect her and move her away just as soon as I had finished sawing this length of wood……
Stupid, stupid, stupid! My lack of intelligence has been a curse throughout my life.
No sooner had I put the saw to the wood than I heard an almighty thud and an immediate, corresponding fearful braying of Lana. I knew exactly what had happened because I had actually seen the possibility, but foolishly had not acted in the moment. My head shot up and saw the destruction that had taken seconds to create. The two beehives were on the floor on their sides, the one was spilling out thousands of angry, confused, traumatised bees and Lana was bouncing up and down mooing fearfully in clear fright surrounded by the incessantly furious insects. I dropped my saw and ran towards her calling her in as soothing a tone as I could possibly muster but with panic absolutely rising in my stomach. She was only a few yards from me, but it felt like running into a burning house. The bees were everywhere. All over her, and very soon all over me.
‘Come on Lana, come on lovely, come to Daddy’ (yes, sorry, I am ashamed to say that Kelly calls herself Mummy and I call myself Daddy. We have no dignity).
Lana, in all her state of panic and no doubt pain with the bees attacking her, couldn’t or wouldn’t heed me. Somehow I got to her. The bees were in my hair, in my face, all over me but Lana was my focus.
‘Come on Lana I yelled, come on.’ I tried to push her away from the kamikaze swarm but she was kicking out, jumping and in as much danger of running straight back to danger as escaping it. Still I pushed, and cajoled and tried as hard as I could not to panic with the bees in my hair.
It was useless I was getting nowhere.
I chased back to the shed where my bee suit was, quickly pulled myself into it at the same time swatting away any bees that had followed me and trying to disengage the ones that had trapped themselves in my hair. I chased back to Lana, grabbing her halter as I did so.
Fortunately she had moved in the right direction and the bees were beginning to tail away from her, but I could see her whole body rippling with those that had tangled themselves into her hide. I’m not sure how but I managed to slip the halter over her head – not perfectly, but in such a way that I had some control over her.
‘Come on lovely, this way, I’ve got you, come on darling’. I pulled, tugged, cajoled and encouraged, further and further and further away from the danger. She was in a state. No doubt stung to high heaven and quite frankly I was well and truly to blame, I had seen the danger and hesitated.
I brushed, flicked and scraped the bees off her and slowly, gradually she calmed down. There were lumps and small swellings all over her neck, her head, her rear and her side, in fact it seemed like everywhere.
‘You poor, poor baby, I am so sorry Lana’, I was begging for her forgiveness for not looking after her better.
Diligently I started going over every part of her trying to identify where the bees had attacked. Where I could see a sting still in her I scraped it off being careful not to squeeze more venom into her body. It seemed to take an age and all the while Lana remained essentially calm with the odd whimpering moo or a flick back of the head to lash out with her tongue at an irritating sore. I then got her back into the paddock so that I could go and get some antihistamine cream and cold, water-soaked towels.
As I walked back up the small slope to the house I began to feel a bit woozy. I became aware that something was still buzzing away in my head so I instinctively tried to get to it. There was a small prick of pain but I found the unfortunate bee and extricated it. Then my whole head began to throb somewhat but I tried to ignore it as best I could as there was still work to be done.
I didn’t have enough cream by any stretch but whatever I had I spread liberally over the small wounds on Lana and then pressed the cold towels over her neck, shoulders and side and rang the vet for advice, which was to keep an eye on her for any adverse reaction and hope for the best. I most fervently hoped for the best.
There was little else I could do for her but wait and observe, so I edged back to our table and bench and plonked myself down. In relaxing I suddenly felt the pain and throbbing in my head. I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair and immediately recoiled as a multitude of prickles struck into me. The wooziness intensified and I realised I had better give Kelly a call.
‘Hellooo’ she answered chirpily.
‘Where are you darling?’ I asked a little too pitifully.
‘Just popping into Aldi’ she answered.
‘Can you just come straight home please? I’ve been stung a couple of times by bees and I think you might need to just keep an eye on me.’
‘Oh you plonker,’ she responded with a heightened level of concern, ‘Ok, I’m on my way, sit still and don’t do anything. How did it happen?’
I gave a her a brief synopsis of the adventure that Lana and I had just had.
‘Oh my god,’ fear and panic rose in her voice, ‘Is Lana ok? What have you done for her? Why on earth did you let her get so close to the hives? Have you called the vet? Where is she now?’
I tried to answer her flurry of questions but felt my tongue thicken.
‘Ok, ok, I’m on my way. Keep an eye on her.’
She hung up and I promptly passed out.
I regained consciousness with Kelly slapping me gently on the face and calling my name. Then, as I still had the bee suit on, I decided it best to put the hive back together. We had a bit of an argument over that as Kelly insisted that I needed to wait a while until I was feeling better. I waited about twenty minutes, but I was anxious for the insects that I felt as much responsibility for as any of our birds, mammals, reptiles, fish or amphibians.
The one hive which was the spare was now unusable, so that went straight onto the bonfire. The other, the good one which Kelly had bought me for Christmas a couple of years previously was fine albeit in its individual parts on the ground with the bees still angrily buzzing all around it, clearly trying to work out how they could put their home back together.
I reassembled it in fairly quick order and I’m sure the legend of the attack by a cow was subsequently told to bee young for bee generations afterwards.
It took a little while for Lana to fully recover from her ordeal. For a few days it was evident that she was in discomfort as the swellings grew, but then fortunately subsequently died down. We were incredibly lucky that was no great reaction and life for her continued more or less as normal.
I recovered too. It was only a few stings, more than I had realised and more painful as the evening went on, but Kelly removed the barbs and plastered me in more cream that she had bought. The forgiveness from Kelly for allowing such a calamity to happen to Lana took a little longer, long after Lana would have remembered what had happened to her.
