"get down! it's the bees!"

Out on another job. Nothing much to say about this one; it's nothing especially glamorous, and it's in a very rural area. I like very rural areas, myself; it's rather fun to get to wade to your site, and if you like fauna (I do), there are often interesting challenges and distractions that have nothing to do with your work. Untarping, for example. It's important to put a tarp over your excavation at the close of business, to make sure everything is protected from disturbances and the elements; it's even more important, at the opening of business, to watch your ass as you take the damn thing off because snakes love to congregate beneath it.

This morning, our tarp proved to be home to 1) two black racers, one of them preparing to shed 2) a corn snake and 3) a large and startled rabbit. Apparently, all of them got along.

Also seen: deer and wild pigs, the latter in great abundance. The cutest thing I've seen to date on this gig was a piglet horde of maybe six or seven little porkers trotting with great enthusiasm toward our van, perhaps under the impression that beneath it they would find the udder to end all udders. Once they got close enough to see the people, their eager onrush halted and turned into a prompt retreat.

Second scariest moment: end of last week, when we heard a strange buzzing sound and then saw a boiling cloud of bees -- yellowjackets, we think -- swarming through the air about twenty or thirty feet north of the site. Scariest moment: today, when one of my colleagues suddenly yelled, "Get down! It's the bees!" about two seconds before a similar (perhaps the same) boiling cloud descended directly upon us. I do not think I have ever hugged the earth with such enthusiasm. It was over quickly; they found no one to sting along their path, as we were all at or below ground level, and so buzzed along their way, leaving us laughing nervously in their wake.