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Bee-utaful!

Lisa Vaught
Apr 16, 2015
3 min read

Hello!

This rather stricken look approximates Frax's response to bugs...

Strangely enough, Frax has issues with flying objects. Not planes or even flying saucers, but insects specifically. We live in the forest, so bugs are rather a fact of life around here. They like to go where life is warm and comfortable~ our house! Bill and I will each say 'bug alert' when it's one that must be taken care of...for me big creeping spiders and anything big and creepy plus unidentified! Bill doesn't care to be eaten up by mosquitoes so that's his 'bug alert'. The family kitchen broom works well for these things.

Over the years, Frax has determined all bugs are bad. All. He will point his great nose at the offending bug hopeful one of us will notice. If not, he will 'alert' by flipping our hands and pointing his nose at the said bug! It's very helpful, but I do hate to see a big guy like him upset about a mosquito!

This time of year we get big bumblebees around the house. These aren't the little yellow guys, but the honest to gosh BIG bees. They can't fly too fast or too well, since they aren't terribly aerodynamic. They are gentle giants however, and just fly up to look at you, then go off about their buisness. I have a hearty respect for them, since both Bill and I are mightily allergic to bees. We've never had issues with these big fellows.

Well...Frax does! He goes out to the backyard, and if he sees bees he's outta there, refusing to go out! This can be an issue if he really has to go!

The worst thing happened last night...a sneaky bee must have followed him back inside. Poor Mr. Bee had been hanging out in our light colored curtains looking out and wondering how he had landed in an alternate universe most of the day. That evening, tired and probably hungry, he decided he had had enough and wanted out, making a concerted effort to break through the glass...In the process he made quite a racket, like a tiny weed-wacker in the bedroom! I was so stunned words escaped me. I managed "Bill...he..help!" Bill stumped in with the broom, gave both Frax and I a withering look, and thumped the bee several times. I felt bad about it, but it wasn't really worth getting stung and going to ER. Frax had no qualms about the thwacking at all, but wound up sitting behind me on the bed. I would have described it more as cowering, but we are buddies after all....

Later this morning, Frax was in the kitchen eating breakfast, I walked into the bathroom horrified to see...our bee! He was still alive, but somehow on his back. Apparently the thwack only knocked him out! Overnight he bravely traveled into the bathroom. Overcome with bee shock, bee dehydration and bee hunger he flopped on his back and passed out. Till I walked in this morning. I gatherered as much paper as I could, and delicately buried him at sea. If Frax had walked in on him, he wouldn't have thought "bee!" in the bee's compromised condition, it would be "eats!". I didn't even want to think what our Vet would say to that! Kinda reminds one of the old song:

"There was an old woman who swallowed a fly,

I don't know why she swallowed a fly...

I think she'll die...."

Obviously, we weren't politically correct back then and hadn't many skills writing music lyrics!

So that was our exciting day! Frax avoiding another harrowing experience with a bee, and all of us avoiding a trip to the Vet that would have been really embarrassing on so many levels.

Ain't Spring grand?

Later...