[LEPS-L:7909] Bee bumble

[Ron Gatrelle]

Dave wrote: ...it seems that Ron's post is just so much alarmism.

Ron's reply:     So are you saying I made up what happened to me when I was
four? Perhaps it is heinous misinformation on my part to further a plot to
destroy the earth. It was just the simple a conveyance of a true episode.
Call it what you want, it was surely alarming to my mother. I only vaguely
remember it.

Dave wrote:  Honeybees are not more important than humans, as you [Ron] try
to make me out to say...

Ron: As I have said before, these posts are not private conversations. They
are to a group. Thus, the remarks of numerous peoples post (including your
own) commonly go beyond the actual typists and become broadly applicable
statements directed to who ever they may apply to -- reader or otherwise. I
did not try to make *you* out to be saying anything.

Dave:  ...but getting the pesticide spray every time you see bees is not
only
unnecessary but environmentally very unwise, as pollinators continue to
dwindle. Loss of our pollinators could cause millions of deaths from
starvation, as well as nutritional deficiencies like scurvy.

Ron:  I do not take this as you trying to make me out to have said anything.
Primarily because I gave no hint of coming anyway near ".. pesticide spray
every time you see bees."  You are just editorializing here, and I agree
fully with what you said here.

Dave:    A calm attitude is a very good protection, no guarantee, but a
frantic
attitude is almost a guarantee that you WILL be stung.  My wife, when a
little
girl, was helping her mom shell peas on the porch when a mud dauber came
along and rested on her mother's knee. She sat still and Janice said, "Mama,
what are you going to do?"
    He mom said, "It's just resting, and it'll fly off presently."   Which
it
did. Jan has never feared stinging insects since then, though she has been
stung a bit.

Ron:   Dave, that is a wonderful bit of anecdotal information. I surely
accept it as 100% truth. It is also 100% truth that in the middle of church
last year I stopped my sermon because the congregation was distracted by a
panicked, dive bombing, mud dauber. I went to the mud dauber, now on the
wall, got it to crawl up on my finger and took it too an usher-open window
and let it go home. All the while I was instructing the congregation of the
docility of mud daubers etc. This past summer we were excited to find that a
Cicada Killer wasp was building nests on the bank of the ditch in front of
our house. One day my daughter, wife and I were fortunate enough to be
standing at the site when the wasp flew up with a Cicada in tow. She was
struggling to haul her prey up the sandy slope to the den she had made. I
took a short stick and placed it in front of her so she could grip it. I was
then going to help her traverse the 10 inches up and over to the den. Well
she got on the stick and went past the den right up to my bare foot and onto
it. Wasp, Cicada and all. At which point:
I did not panic, no not a bit.
I did not smash it, and I did not quit.
I did not ask for pesticide, to do it in.
I moved my foot toward its den.
Rather, I went into my Crock hunter imitation.  "This is de most wonerful
day a me life.  A deadly Killer wasp er on me foot. One sting an I'll
immediately be deed..." All the while I was moving my foot toward the den.
Slipping on the hairs above at my ankle she slid to the side and into the
den. (It really was a great event.) We all had laugh and went about our
business as the wasp went about hers.
    Does anybody want to hear my other dozen wasp/bee stories? My snake and
alligator encounters are really goodies. Actually, the stories of snakes
I've let go in the house and my wife are really the best!   By the way, did
I tell you about the time I was attacked by a swarm of honey bees when I was
four? And did you hear about the guy in India who was going to gas a swarm
of bees if they decided to take up residence 8 feet outside his bedroom
door?





 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl