"Bee" Brave

So, I had left my disrupted apartments (both of them) to attend to my duties as a reader for "Learning Ally"
(formerly known as "Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic). Today, after a rare California rain, it was still crisp (in our parlance around 55 degrees) during the day and sunny, the hills glinting pristine as I drove down Fountain Avenue.


I had decided to forego the radio in favor of a distracted recitation of the rosary, which only got more distracted when a bee half flew and half dropped onto my windshield and onto my wipers. I know insects have a very short life span, and my first thought was that this bee was on my car to take its last wing flicks.


I became fascinated with the creature, who was a bit of a more compressed version of the picture here. But his eyes looked pretty much the same and my real visual alternated with the one in my head, the bee from the Nasonex commercial. If this bee talked, he probably would sound like Antonio Banderas, cum lamentations at the soon and untimely end of his buzzing life.


"Hail Mary, Full of Grace" alternated with "I wonder if the bee is dead already" and feeling like I should do something to make his passing less ignominious.


"Ok, Djinn, this is silly. I mean creatures like this die every moment. You will be feasting on some turkey tonight and won't have a thought about his former life, sacrificed for your meal." 'Tis true enough.


However, this bee had taken on a personal relationship with me by landing on my beaten up RAV 4, and I kept hoping as I peered at him intently during red lights that maybe there was a little bit of bee life left.


Nothing.  Nothing. Then oooh, his little wing moved. Did I see a spark in that beady eye?  Then he seemed to be trying to shake free of something. It occurred to me that when he thumped onto my wipers, something, some one of his thready tentacles, or two, got caught and he wasn't dying, yet, but was looking to get away from a poor choice of firmament that as it was moving, wasn't very firm.


Now, I knew what I must do. I must carefully lift the windshield wiper on my side without ripping something off the beastie and maybe he'd fly away.  Except this wasn't easily done requiring more time than a stoplight maneuver.  Besides I was a little embarrassed at what my gyrations would appear to be--crazy.


I decided to wait until I got to my destination, the studios of Learning Ally maybe a mile or two more away.
He wasn't moving again. Likely, too late.


And then I got there. Parked my car out of the immediate sight of two older men engaged in an animated conversation in Russian, I think, so they wouldn't see what I was doing. I raised the windshield wiper, carefully. The bee, that poor brave bee, did not move, well whatever it is that they have to move.

.
Well, whether it were scared, or dead, I had to go, and I went about my two or so hours of volunteering with nary a thought of this most inconspicuous of creatures on my car, one wiper propped up.


I had almost forgotten the bee and my bother when I came back out, until I saw the still poised wiper.

The bee was gone.  I have chosen to think he has survived the night and will go about his bee business tomorrow. 


I never did get his name.  Only kidding.