Tuesday, August 29, 2017 – Visitor’s Center Pots & Islands, Marilyn Day Winn, Bakery, Cultural Hall, Lyon Drug, Cambre House, Wasp Encounter

We worked hard all day and were very productive, even though we ended on a stinging note; (More on the wasps later.) we still got a lot done. We started by moving the potted grasses out from under the shade cloth out into the open with full sun; even though the sun didn’t come out from behind the fog bank until 11:00AM again today. The hybrid ornamental grasses will be planted tomorrow in the new garden on the south side of the Visitor’s Center. 

While we were working at the Visitor’s Center this morning I had another one of those chance meetings that seem to happen often here in Nauvoo. A stranger came to me to thank us for the beautiful gardens. She said she was from Pinetop – Lakeside Arizona. I said, then maybe you knew my brother-in-law, Victor Wilson (Colbath)?  Oh my gosh, she knew him, dated him, had a crush on him in high school, and considered my sister to be the luckiest girl in the world for landing him. I explained that Victor passed away last December from heart disease, Sis. Johnson and I got to fly home for the funeral. We had a wonderful conversation for several minutes. I love these chance encounters with strangers we have so much in common with, it truly is a small world.

 The rest of the morning we worked in the Visitor’s Center, the Scovil Bakery, the Cultural Hall and the Lyon Drug. As I said we were very productive and got a lot of weeding, cleaning and deadheading done. We didn’t finish at the Lyon drug because the grounds are so extensive. Maybe later in the week we will finish.

After lunch we went with Richard to the Cambre House up on the bluff. The exterior is scheduled to be repainted and all of the weeds and volunteer trees had to be removed away from the sides of the house. Evidently this house doesn’t get much care because the “Rogue Trees” were so large and established we had to use the saw to cut them down instead of the hand pruners.

Next we went across the street to the “White” house to cut down large “Rogue Trees” and that is when the stinging started. One of the limbs landed next to Sis. Johnson and unbeknownst to us, there was a “Burrowing Wasp” nest hole in the ground and the wasps came out by the hundreds! Sis. Johnson was literally standing right on top of the wasp nest entrance. She was instantly enveloped in a cloud of hundreds of angry wasps.

The wasps flew up her pant legs and stung her on the legs and ankles. They swarmed all around her head and stung her multiple times on the face, neck and scalp. She ran screaming for help but there was no place to hide. When she stopped several hundred feet away we thought we had eluded the wasps and we were safe. Unfortunately not, that’s when the final wasp stung her right through her clothing on her derriere!  

Richard assisted me in giving Sis. Johnson a Priesthood blessing and we were off to the Nauvoo Clinic only 4 blocks away. I need to emphasis what a traumatic experience this was. If Sis. Johnson wasn’t in shock she should have been. She was in so much pain she could hardly walk. Each of the sting points would re-erupt in pain as if she was being stung again in the same place. And maybe she was being re-stung because at the clinic one of the wasps came out of her clothing. At home another was in her shoe.

The doctor examined Sis. Johnson and all vitals were stable and normal. That was an answer to prayer. She was given a shot of Antihistamine (Benadryl) to make sure she didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Over the counter pain medication like Advil was recommended.

 Back at home we tried to count all of the sting points but it was impossible to count the number of stings in the scalp. It as too painful for Sis. Johnson to have her hair parted or even touched. I am sure she was stung at least 8 times but counting the scalp she may have been stung 12 or 15 times.

The fact that she was stung so few times was a real miracle. I personally saw the cloud of wasps surrounding her head and considering how many there were she should have been stung hundreds of times. For that little “Nauvoo miracle” she was truly blesses. Tonight while I went to “Rendezvous” she was resting comfortably. She should be able to resume her normal activities in a day or two.