Yesterday, for about an hour, I was playing Galaga right on my front lawn.

You might be thinking, “dude, that’s a weird place to have an arcade machine,” or maybe, “what a piece of crap old game to reference, you old bastard.” In either case you’re correct, but for the purposes of my story, my lowly-old-bastard-gamer self will stick with the Galaga reference, dang nab it!

For the past few months, I’ve had a huge bee problem in my front yard. There are these black, fuzzy bees that resemble bumble bees, but are a bit darker. These suckers do not look friendly at all, and from my experience last year with a different hive, they sting without mercy.

One thing I’ve learned from dealing with troublesome bee hives as a kid is that a quarter-stick of dynamite in a ground hive makes a big fucking hole and a lot fewer bees. But the other more important thing I’ve learned is that as long as you don’t disturb the bees or the hive, the bees usually won’t bother with you at all. In fact, you can stand right next to the hive hole and the bees will simply go around you. Staying still is also a pretty good idea. You don’t want to bump into

one — that would be classified as “disturbing” them.

In order to mow my front lawn, I unfortunately have to run right over this kingdom of bees. Sometimes I take a few out in the process, but most times I’m running like a sissy girl, hoping not to get stung. In the process, the lawn looks like crap. There’s usually also a nice sized pissed-off swarm of bees around, trying to find the asshole who sent a blasting gust of wind into their hive. Since I live on a somewhat busy street corner, I was starting to get sick of being the source of entertainment for passers-by. I think I saw someone selling tickets the other day.

I’ve tried several times to destroy this menacing hive, unsuccessfully of course:

Attempt #1: I stood close to the nest area and located the hive entrance. I waited for the bee activity to quiet down a bit, then I emptied a can of wasp killer into the hole. Result: Unmowed lawn. Note to self: Wait until night to mess with the bees.

Attempt #2: This time I waited until night when the bees were presumably sleeping. I emptied another can of wasp killer into the hole as deep as I could get it. After I was done with that, I took a garden hose and fed it as deep into the hole as I could. I swear that sucker went in about five feet. I turned the water on full blast for about five minutes, moving the hose around a bit to make sure I was really getting them good. Result: A wet, unmowed lawn.

Attept #3: Screw the wasp killer, it wasn’t doing jack. This time I decided to try the water again and really give the hose a good jam into the hole (teehee). After I ran the water for a good ten minutes, I proceeded to stomp on the bee entrance until it was completely closed up. Then I threw a rock on it. Result: A wet, really unmowed lawn with a big rock stuck in a footprint.

Attempt #4: See #3. This time I really stomped on the bee entrance (which they actually relocated a few inches away). I finally got a good idea how large this bee cave was as I stomped on the ground around the hole. The whole lawn was caving in in all directions, about three feet in diameter. I jumped around the area like kangaroo, hoping to crush the bees into oblivion. Once there was what looked like a Yeti-sized footprint in the ground, I filled in the whole area with potting soil. Result: A wet, near knee-high lawn with a filled, Yeti-sized footprint in it. Oh, and a lot of entertained passers-by and pissed off bees.

Attempt #5: As a quick attempt at reliving my childhood, I watered the whole area around the hive and poured gasoline down the hole, waited a bit, then lit it. Result: The doctor says my eyebrows will be back to normal in a month. I think I heard the Boston Pops playing the 1812 Overture.

Attempt #5: This time I’ve had it — the lawn had to be mowed. I decided I’d wait until dark again, then dig up the whole area and find those suckers once and forall. I think I dug about three feet down in that whole area, and found nothing. Oh, they were good. Result: Big F’ing hole in my yard. Don’t even ask about the grass.

Yesterday was Attempt #6, and I decided to forget my other plans which consisted of a certain quantity of gunpowder and/or electricity. No, this time I was going to do things the old fashioned way — I’d stomp on the little fuckers, one at a time.

As I said before, if you catch the bees while they’re not already disturbed, you can stand relatively close to their hive without incident. I stood about three feet away from the swarm of what was about twenty bees, even though they sure as hell should have been disturbed.

Now here’s where the Galaga reference comes in. In case you don’t know or remember what Galaga is, you’re basically this little space ship that sits at the bottom of the screen, shooting up at the oncoming aliens, who sometimes look a bit like insects. Once in a while one of these aliens will swoop down away from the others in an attempt to kill you, to which you counter by avoiding them or frantically shooting back. Once the horde of aliens is gone, yet another group of aliens arrives but more diffuclt than the last, with some aliens breaking away in small groups to attack.

The same sort of situation was at hand in my front lawn. I stood still in eager anticipation, watching the swarm of bees busy about the huge crater I created, waiting for one to break away from the pack so I could deal them deadly shoe-doom. Sweat beaded on my forehead and dipped into my eyes, since my brows were still gone. Oh, these bastards were mine I tell you. Mine! The Greek god Nike was going to have its way with these creatures.

One would stray from the pack, and I’d stomp it into oblivion. Fittingly, the other bees were oblivious to the fate of their careless chums. I’d get another one, then sometimes two in one whack. I was sting free, with all my lives left, and their numbers were dwindling. It looked like perhaps five were left. This was going to work, and I wasn’t even near out of quarters yet.

As my sneaker made jelly of the next bee, I looked up to see that strangely enough, it looked like I counted wrong. There were about seven bees, not four. I rubbed my shoe in the grass like a bull preparing to foolishly dive at a red cape, and made for the next target.

As I took out wave after wave of the bees, more would take their place. I’d be down to five, then count eight left. Down to six — ten left. The fuzzy bastards were regrouping and replenishing from within the hive.

Even with a video game, when you’re doing incredibly well and have all of your lives left, you can tire of it. Sometimes it’s because the game is too easy, and other times it’s because it’s pointless to continue. This was no video game of course, but the similarities were there. This was both too easy and pointless at the same time — those bees were never going to stop. It was time to pull out the cheat code: Sevin.

In case you don’t know, sevin is a poisonous powder you can spread out in an area to kill just about any insect. If they crawn in this stuff, they’re basically dead. If they crawl in the stuff and make it back to their nest, that’s even better. So I bowed my head in shame and took a drive to Home Depot for some powdered bee pain.

Last night I spread the sevin powder all over the three foot area where there was still a crater from my kangaroo episode. Today when I came home, I saw no bees. The battle was finally over, and now the battle of mower against grass-forest was to take its place.

As I approached the sevined area in the lawn, it surely looked like quite a small battle had been waged there. Chared grass and dirt, bee corpses, and powdered sevin. I glanced close by and noticed one stray bee flying around. Perhaps it was a latecomer to the previous day’s festivites, wondering now what to make of the carnage. Or maybe it was just a passer-by from another colony, coming to see if all the war talk was true, and now shockingly finding out it’s much worse than it could have imagined.

I figured I’d let the poor little guy go on its way, maybe as a warning to others that my lawn was no place to dig a fucking cave.

Nah, screw it. Game over, sucker.