Throughout my life as an East Coast guy, which is all of my life, local insects have fascinated and charmed me, garnering my attention to this day. I collected them as a kid, murdered and mounted, but I evolved quickly into a lover. They were a weapon to use against my older brother when he thought it might be a good idea to alleviate his boredom by wrestling me to the ground and sitting on my face. But I could get lost in their world, and frequently did, looking at and handling bees and wasps. I knew that bumble bees were the Zeppelins of the stinging set. They're big, beautiful, and rather benign. Labrador bees. I would gently cover them with my hand and lift them from flowers. When I stopped running and opened my hand to show my brother, the tide turned, he ran, me chasing. Bumble bees, among others, were my buddies. So when I went into the laundry room this morning, and heard a buzzing, of course I looked around. There, In the bottom of the laundry sink, was a big, beautiful, healthy looking, bumble bee, drinking long and hard from a thimble sized pool of water held together down there by, cohesion, adhesion or some other form of magic that defies logic. He must have gotten trapped in that room; it opens to the driveway. As I put my hand down flat on the bottom of that deep utility sink, offering him a ride back outside, he climbed up as if he had been waiting for the elevator and the doors had just opened on his floor. He gently tasted my thumb as I opened the door to the fresh air, buzzing, bumbling really, at the end of my outstretched arm. He was just being a bumblebee. Slowly, laboriously, with what seemed like more weight than power to make himself fly, he lifted off... as if he were filled with Helium..
