Bee

My empty discarded breakfast bowl acquired a bee.

I turned my back for a minute and there she was. Upside down. Her little sectioned legs waving crossly in a menacing puddle of yogurt . 

I fished her out with my spoon and put her outside on the high garden wall where she and I could survey the damage.

It was clear that it was serious. 

The whole of the bottom half of her body was covered in yogurt. Her wings and her legs stuck together in the milky glue as she wiggled and squirmed. I dropped some water from the kitchen tap onto the spoon and I poured it over the back of her body - all the time thinking - “ Am I washing a bee?” - but immediately she seemed a bit more mobile. By the time I got back with more water she was scuttling on her newly freed legs but I could see her poor little wings were still stuck down tight. I poured some of the water off the spoon onto her beautiful wings : So thin I felt worried that my water would soak them and she would drown . It occurred to me that I had never watched a bee this closely. Never noticed the stripes and sections of her body or her ferocious humming energy. She needed those wings to propel that energy. Without them her life had nowhere to go.

While I was watching her, pouring tiny drips of water over her back, one of her wings came free.

She immediately propelled herself around in a little circle, did a little dance, and then, with a massive heave, fell off the wall onto the ground. If you imagine for one minute that falling from a height about the distance of the Empire State Building would stop her in her tracks you would be wrong. She was invested in her life and, now, so was I. It had begun to seem, in fact, that she was attached to some struggle of my own. As I watched her trying to climb back up the wall I could see she was getting tired. I heard myself talking to her saying: “Come on, don’t give up”. I poured some sugary water on the ground for her which she sucked up without thanks. The rolling and wriggling began again. Her back legs scraping more of the yogurt off trying to free her remaining stuck wing. I tried to help but now she and I had another problem. Mabel, my sometimes overly curious tabby cat, had noticed her and was staring intently. Her belly, ominous, flattened to the ground.

This bee needed to go.

In desperation I pressed the tip of the spoon gently under the edge of her wing and levered it a bit for her. She looked at me furiously. Bee language for ‘fuck off you got me into this mess’ - astonishingly clear. Then suddenly the other wing came free. Before I could get a close look to see if it was still usable she began to charge up and down like a toddler. The cat and I now like two Olympic spectators up out of our seats . She got lift. Took a run at it, and then dropped. Lifted again. Legs dangling mid-air like the landing gear of a light plane. A bit higher and a bit higher until suddenly she got herself into a wide ark on the breeze and there she was, over the wall. She was gone.

I watched her until she was out of site.

Mabel sighed, a bit disappointed I think to have lost her quarry, not understanding she had dodged a bullet; she wandered back into the house for a snooze. It was all over for her.

I am still thinking about our bee though. That furry bullet and her ludicrous incongruent strength. I loved her. She was a badass . A sweet-furry madam. Furious to be free. Her short life a victory.

I am still smiling.