In April of 1997, we had a spell of miraculous warm weather, I opened all the windows in the office and the door to the deck so I could enjoy some fresh air. When I finished lunch I noticed this yellow jacket the size of a 747 flying around the kitchen and my desk. Well, I can’t concentrate on my work with this gigantic stinger buzzing my head so when LeRoy (my boss) got back from lunch I said, “I let a giant bee in here and now I can’t do my work.”
So he grabs a paper towel and starts chasing it around while I give helpful advice like, “open the window!” Finally, he grabs the yellow jacket and smushes it and puts it in the trash. The next day, I’m sitting at my desk and here comes this gigantic yellow jacket crawling over the counter. My pea brain quickly tries to rationalize this bizarre situation where our office would be attacked by a giant bee 2 days in a row. But I notice the poor lady is sort of hobbling and I think, “ohmigod, LeRoy didn’t kill that bee, it’s come back.”
Since I don’t like to kill things — I put a cup over the bee, put cardboard under the cup, put a magazine under the cardboard and take the thing out and put it on the deck where it sits. When LeRoy gets back from lunch I go, “hey did you kill that bee yesterday?” and he says, “yeah, its guts smushed out.” And I said, “nuh-uh,” and he goes “yeah I’ll show you.” and he digs through the trash and finds the paper towel: BUT THE BEE IS GONE.
I show him the thing on the the deck and he swats at it with a magazine to finish the job. Later I look out there and: THE BEE IS WOBBLING AROUND AND HEADING BACK TOWARDS THE OFFICE DOOR. I’m starting to think this feels like a B movie. ar ar ar
I close the deck door and the yellow jacket crawls up in a corner and that’s that. So the next day I look and it’s sprawled on the deck so I go out to poke at it — and if you can believe it, it’s legs are still moving and I’m starting worry about what sort of karmic debt I’m building up here. But the next day it was totally stiff so I brought inside and put it on my desk because I wanted to take it home. I was going to put it on my altar because I figured it was like, the Jesus of bugs. Thing is, an insect carcass is sort of fragile and I was trying to figure out a good way to get it home in one piece and the cleaning lady threw it out. And why would she expect me to be keeping it anyway?
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I’m still a diehard Mac person living in a Mac-Only household. My 520 Powerbook lives in the closet with the MacPlus and the lime iMAC is the favored child. I use BBEdit which is fabulous but I’ll bet the creators of that program would cry if they saw how badly I utilize all the handy features.
Debut: 6.30.96; Minor Changes: 12.23.00
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