Telling The Bees

the local paper, the Daily Intelligencer, gives a little red plastic newspaper boxes to subscribers. One graces the end of our driveway.

Ours has a nest of bees. They're at the very back. A small nest, about thirty of them. Probably yellow jackets.

Yellow jackets are the vermin of the bee world. They eat flesh. Dead animals. They're aggessive. They'll sting with very little provocation.

On those mornings when I have to be at work at 6 am rather than 7 am, the paper usually isn't delivered when I leave, so my father is the one to go out and get it. I've gotten used to gently removing the paper and dropping it on the driveway to get the bees off. My father probably wouldn't be down with that. He's probably going to get stung. And that would be bad.

I should kill them.

I should go and by some Raid, and in the early morning or in the evening, when they're alll in the nest, give them a good spritz and kill them.

But I don't want to.

I don't want to have to end their little bee lives. I don't want to have to dispatch them from this mortal coil, turn them to dust.

And that's silly. No good reason for it. They don't even have brains, just collections of ganglia. They wouldn't be aware of it.

But still. All God's creatures. The apotheosis in Shelly's 'Prometheus Unbound' comes when the titan declares, "Let no living thing suffer pain." Bad karma. All that.

*sigh*

I guess age and time make Budhists of us all.

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