Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
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I got a little too excited; you know how I get sometimes. But I was real<br />
good about it; I got control of myself and caught my breath, and when<br />
the guy said, Hello? I said, Is this the bee man? and he said, Yes, and I said,<br />
My granny’s got a bee problem, how do you get those bees down, do you cut down<br />
the hive and then transport them somewhere? and he said, No, we just gas them;<br />
they drop dead within twenty-four hours, guaranteed, and I said, Isn’t that bad<br />
for the environment? and he said,<br />
Son, which do you care about more, the<br />
“environment” or your granny being<br />
stung by a bunch of insects? and when I<br />
didn’t say anything, he said, Where<br />
does your granny live? and then I got<br />
nervous and hung up.<br />
That may sound like a failure<br />
to you, but I’m not James Bond, so<br />
get over it. There are other ways<br />
to find out about honeybees. On<br />
the internet, I found out about<br />
the worker bees. They do all kinds of stuff you wouldn’t guess, using<br />
processes you wonder how they set up without talking to each other,<br />
without signing a constitution. The worker bees are the sexual misfits.<br />
Some of them go on errands, some of them guard against intruders, some<br />
of them tidy up the hive before the queen does room inspection, some of<br />
them carry out the dead and injured. They’re all little humans in little<br />
palaces, and I guess we’re killing them all, and I knew that would set<br />
River ablaze.<br />
I made my move before history class started. I didn’t want to do it<br />
in front of the chemistry teacher; I just knew that crazy Whit would<br />
overhear me and compliment me for being “well versed,” or some crock<br />
like that, make me sound like a geek, a bozo. I knew the history teacher,<br />
a coach who didn’t know the difference between Cleopatra and Reagan.<br />
I knew he wouldn’t give a rat’s tail. He was the kind that went home and<br />
learned from the textbook along with us, and if you asked him a question<br />
he didn’t know, he’d go into a class-long rant about Bonnie and Clyde,<br />
just to avoid answering. He said that when they robbed all those places<br />
during the Great Depression, Bonnie never fired a shot. Did you know<br />
that? During the shoot outs, Clyde fired and Bonnie loaded.<br />
Anywho, that day I took a deep breath and dove in with both feet;<br />
I marched straight up to River and told her about the bees and Bill<br />
Maloney. I could tell this surprised her enough to quell her rage some,<br />
but I realized I needed to have a reason for striking up a conversation, so<br />
I said, Wouldn’t it be funny if we found out where this guy lived and, say, egged his<br />
24<br />
On the internet, I found<br />
out about the worker bees.<br />
They do all kinds of stuff<br />
you wouldn’t guess, using<br />
processes you wonder how<br />
they set up without talking to<br />
each other, without signing a<br />
constitution.