Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Death of a bumblebee

I was quietly hanging up the last items of washing out on the line, when there was a whacking sound on the concrete path.
It sounded like a nut hitting the ground.
There are no nut trees near our clothes line so I scanned the path to see what had fallen. Had some kids thrown something over the fence?
But there it was - a big bumblebee, dead on the path.
Bumblebees look so soft but like other insects they have an exoskeleton that is hard when it hits the ground.
Who knows what went wrong, whether his little heart gave out or he had put on too much weight for his wings.
It had all ended in tragedy, falling from the sky to an unceremonious death on the damp concrete path.
A solitary, short, sharp, knock that did not even echo, was the only sound to herald his passing.
There should be a analogy to human life and struggles in the death of this bumblebee.
But what I will remember is that bumblebees are not soft and cuddly because they make a whacking sound when they hit the ground at speed.

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5 Favourite Sights Seen

  • 1996 Watching tropical lightning turn night to day, outside a little wooden church in a small village in Sabah.
  • 2004 Flying down the Rainbow Valley at 8000ft in a cessna on a clear blue day.
  • 2003 Seeing and hearing Michael Schmacher rolling out of the pit garage in his Ferrari in Hungary.
  • 2009 Chancing upon 100 or more dolphins just off the Kaikoura Coast swimming around, jumping out of the water, doing somersaults and generally having fun.
  • 2006 Finding a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the bush at Kaikoura that was full of playing baby seals.