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You don't find the yellow jackets, they find you. As a small child, climbing up the slope below the hickory tree in front of our house, I found nothing. Nothing but logs laid slope-parallel, to keep the dirt in place. Under the tree: perfect nuts with the little hard prongs at the tips, perfect half outer shells to make into boats, perfect maidenhair spleenwort fern. But going back, oh that was a different story. The yellow jackets were waiting for whoever had stomped their nest, and they knew just what to do. I didn't. I didn't know that you move slowly so your blood pumps toxin throughout your body slowly. I didn't know that a cool bath was in order, for the same purpose [and now I wonder how my mother, raised in the Bronx, knew this]. That's what my mother did when she caught me after I had to run screaming all the way around the house. My dad got caught mowing, once. When I took over mowing I was always on my guard. I still keep my eyes open for the buzzing yellow and black tornado.