BEES

Where I sit in my home, when not out and about drinking life-sustaining coffee, is in front of a large bright window facing the street. When the weather becomes a bit warmer, every few minutes I will hear FWAP! PUNC! BAB! PAMM! These are the sounds of giant wobbly bees flying into the window. Over and over and over again, all summer long, they go top-speed into the glass. I have come to the realization that I have developmentally-disabled bees. They cannot learn. They bounce off the window, dazed, then repeat their futility until they are too stunned to continue or are dead. It is not a small sound they make either – every single time, it causes me to look up and frown. FWAP! PUNC! BAB! PAMM! My god, you stupid bees, you stupid stupid bees! Have the wasps and hornets taught you nothing?? They at least know to float warily and evilly around the perimeter of my home, rather than participate in this insect kamikaze display. Maybe a couple of times I will see a particularly dumb sparrow also fling into the glass, but it at least seems embarrassed and will move across town. But you stupid bees. You keep coming.

Why do you want in here so badly? I would just yell and kill you. There is nothing in here you want, you dumbasses. I will not make pets of you, let you watch TV with the kids, raid the pantry for honey and Rice Crispie Treats, or take a bath. You are supposed to live outside. You can try and try and try to break the glass but it will NEVER HAPPEN. If I thought you were smarter, I would admire your persistence, but I see now you are all just mindless ninnies. I am sorry if that is harsh.

When I was three, I was outside not drinking coffee and began pulling some wood off the Family Pile Of Wood to build Barbie’s Ammunition Hut or something, and you came after me. BEES! BEES! BEES! The other children surrounded me and yelled. “RUN!” and “NO, DON’T RUN, STAND STILL!” and “NO, RUN!” My response was to stand there, get stung, and weep. When you bees finished with me and the kids told me how stupid I was not to run away, I vowed that bees would never outsmart me ever again. The angry salty tears that ran down my little red face and into my mouth tasted of bitter resolve.

So I find myself, sitting here, and constantly being reminded that you, BEES, are but a few feet away from me, so incapable and wretched that you cannot not fly into my window. Bees, I call you out! You will not get me! I will put on headphones and will not hear you, forevermore! HA! Humans are smarter than bees! Mostly.