Behold the beautiful bumblebee! I love these creatures. Though they make for a fierce and fearsome fuzzy front, they have always been docile and amiable when pollinating their favorite flowers in the garden. And in all the years of bumping up against them, they have never tried giving me a bite, unlike their grumpy cousins. (My hands still smart at the memory of an attack earlier this summer.) Bumbles merely bounce from flower to flower, awkwardly buzzing with seemingly happy abandon, and I’ve even had a few bump into my arm or chest as we were both navigating a hydrangea, and they’ve always been polite about it.
This time of the year, when they are favoring a tree hydrangea and the seven-sons-flower tree about to start blooming, I will often find a few stuck in the pool, their wings vainly beating but not gaining enough air to lift them from the water. I always save them when I find them in such a predicament, pulling a piece of Northern sea oat grass and letting them climb aboard the rescue vessel to dry off and take flight. It’s the least I can do for something that doesn’t sting me.
Would that the world should seem so friendly as a bumblebee…
