Posted by skyfox
on Sun 14 Jun 09, 1:49 PM to skyfox's blog.
It's a cool day, but I still like to leave the patio door opened to get some fresh air in. But with our garden, we get a lot of flying insects of various kinds. Right now a bumblebee has mistakenly flown into the living room and is buzzing pointlessly against the other glass door.
The act of a bee bumping its head against a glass door or window is a common vision, linked with futility. It buzzes loudly (as bumble bees do), knocking its head against the glass, falls down into the gap in front of the door, rises, continues its buzzing and bumping, rests for a moment on the frame, cleaning it's hind quarters, and then resumes its buzzing and bumping.
Another common image is of a fly doing the same. Yet there is something much more poignant about the bee, as flies land on shit, but bees land on flowers. Both are necessary to the environment (in the grand scheme of things), but we prize the bee more because of its pollination talents and honey production.
And yet in both cases, it is only violence that gets them free. Trapping them under a cup and paper to release them back outside, or a swatting motion of yesterday's newspaper to shoo them to the open door.
In the silent room (broken only by my keyboard), the buzzing is overwhelming, a shock to my ears. Instinctive alarm of dangerous insects rises to be quelled by "it's only a bumblebee". I do not rise, as I am entranced by this animal's anthropomorphic desperation. Shall I get the paper I used yesterday for the same task? No, this is far more interesting.
And before I am able to contemplate the existensial implications of a valued insect doing battle with an invisible foe, it is gone out the door it came in. And the silence is deafening.
It is only now in the silence that I notice the snail that somehow for reasons unknown crawled two-thirds of the way up the glass door.
