After the trauma of the wild banshee Daddy Long Legs I was glad to see a proper summer insect gracing my room today, a lifesize, proper english (probably) bumble bee.
It made be happy and only slightly scared. Because, despite my misgivings of the Daddy Long Legs they might scream and bite and kill, but they don’t sting.
The Bee was looking pretty drowzy, I put a roll of sellotape on it, not literally taping it up, but so he was inside the roll and therefore not crawling towards my face. It wasn’t flying, it was too drowzy.
I wanted to leave it htere, but Dawn, being a country girl and knowing about these things, told me it would die. I asked if I could kill it, but before she could say no (for she is the God of All Bees) I looked at it and saw that despite being scary and able to kill, it was pretty beautiful. So…I had to save it.
In a delicate operation I covered the slelotape and bee with a glass, then slid a flyer underneath it, learning from my spider errors I was wary of trying to lift this contraption. So I slid a thicker bit of card under, but this itself was tricky, i had to lift everythign and the bee almost escaped at lightening quick speed, and then I almost broke its leg.
But I got it all together, then opened the balcony door, lifted the bee, the card, the flyer, the sellotape and the glass and let them all free in the wild. Well, I took the glass away and left them on all on the balcony.
Hours later and the bee had gone (the flyer, card and sellotape are obviously too tame as they are still there, unaware that not only is freedom in their grasp, but of what freedom actually is, they have very primitive brains).
They’re still there, it’s sometimes hard to let go, but the wild is best for them.