2009.12.13 Plight of the Bumblebee
I happened to be outside and I spotted this large bumblebee sitting on our driveway. Quite still, but appearing intact. I blew on it, and was rewarded with some lethargic movement. It wasn't dead. Not yet.
Not being quite dead yet seemed like a temporary technicality. Maybe it was just too cold out, and the big fellow didn't make it back to the hive in time to huddle with the rest of the hive. Maybe contingency drove it to drive its barbed stinger into some offending offender, and with it ripped its heart out of its ass. Maybe it was just too damn old. Regardless, its doom seemed imminent.
And, being fascinated with entomology as I am, I rushed to grab my sturdy camera with its sad lack of a macro-zoom lens (cough cough HINT HINT), and took pictures of it in this unusual state of being approachable and recognizable. Also to accede to that annoyingly flowery and melodramatic part of myself that is constant sniffing around for poignancy - circle of life and all that shit.
Fast forward to today, and I find myself out walking with little Simon. Well, technically, I was the one doing the walking - he was just along for the ride. And I found myself telling him stories about Grandpa Castle - his Grandpa Castle, my dad. I told him one of the good ones; where I went hiking with him at age 6 to a lake in an extinct volcano in Valhalla and I almost died of hypothermia (happy times). Of course, the little bumblebean fell asleep, and I stopped telling lies stories to avoid waking him, and was left to my own thoughts.
What I found myself thinking about was what I might tell Simon about Grandpa Castle's last decade. The one where he wasn't dead quite yet, but it seemed like a temporary technicality. To be honest, I'm really not sure I know what to say about it. Other than wonder if perhaps I should have stepped on that bumblebee after I captured its soul with my camera.