Fire up your temple!
Sep 5th, 2008 by Ad Blankestijn
According to Monsters & Critics, a priest in Niigata accidentily set fire to his temple when trying to smoke out a hornet’s nest with a torch. The prickly insects were hiding on top of a cupboard, but when the priest tried to torch them (not very Buddhist, is it?) they vehemently attacked him so that the panicking man of religion set fire to the cupboard. As a result, the whole temple went up in smoke.
He should have first consulted Wikipedia, which warns: “Hornets, like many social wasps, can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense: this is highly dangerous to humans.”
On the other hand it is also a way to quickly solve the probem of countryside temples that can no longer manage financially due to the dwindling and graying population! (as reported on the BBC).
P.S. The fact that annual deaths in Japan are on the increase (now 1.1 million, and expected to grow to 1.7 million by 2040) will not help temples. More and more people are looking for economical funerals and burials and shunning the extremely expensive Buddhist type. All these deaths will, however, lead to a dearth of crematoriums.
It’s true. There are so many temples that are just barely surviving. I think temples that no longer can remain as temples should be converted into ryokan and marketed to foreign travelers. Wow, there is a good business idea.
Many stings take place during the fall
months. Reason being, bees and wasps are cold blooded insects and they linger
around people and pets in order to absorb the body heat, therefore increasing
the chances of getting stung for both.
Last week, I witnessed a 4 year old girl with her hand and forearm swollen
to her elbow, from a wasp sting that she received to her fingertip the day
before. The sight of her hand and arm brought tears to my eyes because I knew
that if she had had
Baker’s Venom Cleanser available when she was stung, none of her discomfort
would have elevated to that extreme point of swelling and discomfort.
Our web site http://www.BeeStingCure.com
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news commentary video footage from 1988 has been added to
YouTube.com/BeeStingCure
and the link is available at our site.