Worst.Leader.Ever camping story.

[WOT?*]

Girl Scout encampment was...fun. Well, it actually was. Except for the part where I remember we have a troop of 9-11 year old girls with various issues that need to be dealt with on occasion - and me.

My Archery story - they had bows in 15, 20 and 25 lb. increments.  One of our girls, who is very athletic, was using a 25 lb. bow and doing okay with it.  They noticed she had the big bow (she's as tall as I am already so there's that) so we switched bows.  I went from getting a bulls-eye and hitting the target to missing and hitting the ground.  Why?  Because with the bigger bow my stance changed.  And when I pulled it back my shoulder pulled back and the bowstring thwacked my boob.  Poor Lefty got twanged three times in four shots.  The fourth time the arrow went flying because I overcompensated the hell out of the bow so it wouldn't sheer my poor nipple off.  By the way, getting your boob sheared by a bowstring Hurts.Like.A.Bitch.

After games, we had free time and made crafts in the lodge.  Then we were on duty for set-up for dinner.  One of our girls went to wash her hands with the other girls crowding around a sink by the kitchen and saw there was an unused faucet...that she didn't realize was an insta-hot faucet. So, she shoved her hands under the empty faucet and turned on the water and burned her hands.  First degree burns and our first nurse visit.  Except the nurse, who is a troop leader, doesn't realize that the girl hears everything and remembers everything.  So after SWAPS and s'mores we're going back to the cabin and she's saying she'll need another bandage because her hand won't heal for a week and (very matter-of-factly) she'll probably be waking up at midnight screaming because that's when the Tylenol will be wearing off and we'll need to get her more.

We're sharing a cabin with another younger troop (8-9 year olds).  They're leaving earlier on Sunday than we are.  So we're all getting in each other's way as they're trying to pack up so I tell our girls to go play outside with their girls (who are playing in the woods) for twenty minutes while they load up and I'll call them in after the other group is loading into their van so we can start packing and clean-up.  About ten or fifteen minutes in, there is a lot of panicked screaming.  The girls were running through the forested area near the cabin, one of them saw a bee's nest on the ground, called it and jumped over.  The next girl wasn't so lucky, as she stepped in out.  The insects (actually they were yellow-jackets and not bees) swarmed on the girls and three of ours (and none of the other troop) got stung.  The three that got hit were one with anxiety and pre-existing medical conditions ("P" got 5 stings, both legs and her butt), one that's pretty blasé and stoic about pretty much anything (yay for her getting hit and not another girl, if that can be counted as a silver lining - she got two on the ear and one on the arm) and Kidlet with 7 on her trunk and head.  P is on the sofa crying, saying she's allergic to pollen and it's spreading from her legs and up her throat and her head is about to explode, Kidlet is panicking because even after we'd checked, there was a yellow-jacket in her hair and she got stung in the head, plus another that was under her shirt.  She's got thick, curly hair and it hadn't been brushed and a yellow-jacket crawled in as we were checking the girls to let them in the cabin bee-free.

One of the bees made it downstairs and while we're upstairs calling the nurse for a check of the stung girls, the girls downstairs start freaking.  I run downstairs, leaving the stung girls crying on the sofa while the troop leader is in the anteroom on the phone with the nurse and other girl's mom and then HER mom to explain the situation.  Thankfully, her mom is our cookie mother and knows the situation between us, the girls, and everything else going on.  I go down, kill the other bee, and flush it down the toilet.  I calm the girls and head back upstairs.  Kidlet is telling the other girls "they're not trying to kill us.  They're just protecting their homes." to help calm them down between "it got me in the head, my head hurts."  In the meantime, Leader's daughter is downstairs freaking out, saying she needs to talk to her doctor and she sees bees everywhere and I need to quit saying the word bees.  I spend the next thirty or so minute talking her down and getting her to see that there aren't bees in the room.

The site-managers came to check out the cabin before we left - which was nowhere near ready to check out, and we ended up deciding Leader would leave with her daughter, who was still traumatized, and P with her anxiety, and my older granddaughter Kiddo, who is best friends to both of them, sitting between them to amuse them and keep their minds off what happened.  I stayed behind with the rest of the troop (including stung 7x Kidlet and 3x Other Girl, Burnt Hand girl, Leader's younger first-grade daughter and the single girl who wasn't traumatized, injured or six years old to clean the place up and get checked out.

It was an interesting time.  We'll do it again...minus the bees, Insta-hot and twanged boob-string.

[sugarbear]

Omg. That sounds awful. I'm sorry.

[winelady]

you just made me scared for our Girl Scout campout next month! lol!

[Deleted]

I'm exhausted just reading about it.

[Deleted]

Oh dear. A yellow jacket nest is pretty much my worst nightmare. Those poor girls were lucky it wasn't much worse.

[candreco]

Aaaaaannnd this is why I will not be taking my Daisies camping, even though they're all over the idea of it. We'll do the daytime portion of our service unit's encampment in the spring, max.

They really should let leaders have a shot or two after the girls are asleep, as long as one adult stays sober, of course.

[WOT?*]

Oct 21, 2014 23:20:35 GMT -5 winelady said:

you just made me scared for our Girl Scout campout next month! lol!

Don't be.  Except for the above, it was actually very fun and the girls loved it. Even with the bees they want to go camping again.  We had a cabin as newbies, of course, and we have some socially less accepted type girls in the troop (we started a troop of girls that couldn't fit in other troops and were on waiting lists, so we tend to have the ones who have some occasional issues; they're from several schools and so they're each other's support group as much as anything else.)

I forgot the part about leader's younger daughter falling from a picnic table bench and hitting her head, so I had the seven of them by myself while she took her little one to the cabin for a rest. THAT was our first nurse visit, not the burned hand.  (But then, she had them on her own for a bit as well when I went back to the cabin for stuff for SWAPS that we decided to make at the lodge instead of in our cabin.)  Our poor troop.

Just be sure the girls stay on trails and if they're off that they're respectful of the nature around them rather than running and tromping through the trees without regard to the other creatures that live there.  And if you can bring an extra parent, a third set of hands, eyes and ears is never amiss.