I have an old blackjack oak near my pond that had bees in it that I didn’t know about. It also had a limb that grew down like blackjacks do that scraped my tractor cab each time I mowed. So, one day I’m over there with my backhoe, Sarge is riding with me, and I have the brilliant idea to just break that limb off. I set up on my stabilizers, brakes locked, front bucket on the ground and reached up and broke that sucker off. Man alive, those bees came out and eat me alive ! By the time I got my stabilizers up, brakes unlocked, in gear, bucket up, they had stung me 24 times. I looked at Sarge once and they had him covered up but I think his hair was too long for them to sting him. To top it all off, I’m on an incline and when I turned my wheels too sharp with all the weight on the down hill front tire it came away from the rim and lost all its air. We had to jump off and hoof it ! Even an experienced operator sometimes does stupid stuff !
