BEEEES!!!! You see, bees enjoy nesting inside mailboxes, especially the central mail units you see at apartment complexes and such. You see, in these boxes, there is a little slot always open for outgoing mail. The bees have figured out that they can crawl into said slot and make their nest in there. From a bee's standpoint, it is quite an excellent place to nest. Nobody ever opens up said door to reveal said nest. Well, somebody does--me.

This ain't the first time I've stumbled upon a bee's nest in a mailbox. I've seen em' before and often knocked em down--they have been quite small in the past with one-two momma bees/wasps care-taking it. Today's nest was a yellow-jacket nest, with about 5-6 bees on it. Being the smart dude I am, I decided to treat the nest like any other nest and take it out with a plastic mail divider I had.

Instant fail.

The nest was too big to knock down in one fell swoop. Plus the bees then swarmed the mailbox and thus my truck parked next to the mailbox. And since the box was already open, I couldn't hop in the truck and leave, due to to liability's sake. Anyways, got a hold of my supervisor, she sent me out some Raid, and I blasted that bees nest into chemical oblivion.


                                     



This is the nest after I sprayed it good and dead. It's at least an inch long/wide, which is quite large for a bee's nest. Yuck. Good thing I didn't get stung. Plus it's a good thing I got rid of it anyways--it was a hazard for both other mail carriers and customers using said mailbox.

Anyways, on Friday, I had a rough day with the heat. Yowch. I've also discovered throughout the week that opening metal mail slots in doors that have been facing the afternoon sun for a couple of hours is not a pleasant experience. So hot!

Well, made it back to the office only to realize that route adjustments were tomorrow (Saturday) and we had to re-do our mail cases with new labels. You see, a while ago some people came and monitored the carriers and their routes in order to make adjustments to said routes to make them more efficient. Though they succeeded in some places, they also made some really wacky adjustments.

For example, instead of taking a usual path you were used to--i.e. take a right on street A to street B--it's now take a right on street A, do a few boxes, take an instant left down sketchy alley, loop around the block, make a u-turn, then continue down street B. Most of this negativity is me having to re-learn a route and me not being used to the new design--the route isn't that bad and after a few days of it, things should go swimmingly.

I'm being put on a different, new route for me next week, so no more C48 route, the one I've been doing all this past week. By the way, that's how we name our routes--the "C" stands for "city" and the number is the, well, route number. Pretty straightforward actually.

As for other occurrences the past few days, I knocked off a mailbox lid.

                              


Actually, the thing was rusty beyond belief and was only hanging on by one hinge. As I opened up the box, it literally just fell to the ground. I picked it up and placed it next to said mailbox--all I could do really.

Other than that, learning to deal with the heat was my most notable experience. It's funny--at first it's miserable but once you get all sweaty and nasty, then you feel quite comfortable. Sure your back of your shirt is soaked with sweat and droplets of sweat are always forming on your face, but it's just the body's way of adapting to the environment. Once you've adapted, well, you still ain't the most comfortable person in the world, but it's better.

As I said to a guy I met out on the route though, I'd much rather be relaxing at home on the couch with the air conditioning on. Ha!