July 31, 2003
The Buzz
Maybe it was one of our neighbour's lushly flowering plants that attracted them at first, but we will never know. Like this lovely purple specimen. I must have taken ten shots of it, but this one caught the light of the flash in a weird dusky-evening way.
It was probably a couple of weeks ago... and I was on the phone, walking around and blithely chatting away the morning in a way that underemployed people can do especially well, when I noticed a bee hovering over the pool skimmer. Suddenly it dropped down and out of view, disappearing in a separation of the concrete patio.
A few minutes later I watched the same process unfold again. Nothing is that coincidental.
And so the troops are brought in... the 3rd Infantry. Or, more accurately, a tall skinny guy in a suit that looked like he was heading to Venus for a cocktail at quitting time.
"There's probably forty or fifty of them", he answered when asked about the population of our shrouded little community.
"They live in the ground... and there might be a little traffic jam when returning bees realize what has happened."
I felt like a mass murderer for a minute. Nice. Just what I needed right about now, a little brush with Osama-ness. Tomorrow if I wake up to a flock of ducks in the pool I suppose I have to get out a shotgun, make a nice orange sauce and send out dinner party invitations.
If August brings a plague of locusts I will not be surprised...
Posted by stephen at July 31, 2003 11:02 AM