The Birds and the Bees...

So, now that I have your attention, I'll tell you about my day. It was one of those days when you have a plan, but one thing leads to another, to another, etc., etc. This morning I asked my neighbor if we could borrow his truck tomorrow to take some things to a friend's house for a yard sale (that's another whole blog topic). He had plans to leave town for the night so he told me just to take the key. We can use the truck, but it had grass in it. I offered to take it to the green waste dump. So, if you're going to the green waste dump, then you need to have a full truck, right? I thought I'd pull a few of the big weeds and maybe our zucchini plants. Well, upon looking at the zucchini plants, we discovered it must have frozen last night because all the garden plants were suddenly dead. So, we might as well remove them all. That was a job! It's a sure sign of Fall and the migration of the BIRDS (see, this is about birds) when you clean out the garden. We wrestled the multitude of entangled vines and packed them in the truck. I was a sweaty, scratched-up mess, but now it was time to go to the dump. So, in the truck with no air conditioning we had the windows down. Four or five minutes before arriving at the dump, Dale felt something on his neck. He went to swat it only to find it was a bee, which in its startled state stung him on the knuckle. Being so brave, he didn't want to pull over or anything, but you could see the stinger in his knuckle. Five minutes later, we stopped the truck and I went to pull it out. It was still attached to a tiny piece of the BEE's tailend and it was still moving!!!! It's like the chicken with its head cut off. The tiny piece of bee bum was wiggling back and forth as if to stick the stinger in further or maybe get it out so it could fly away (it didn't realize the rest of its body already did!) So, I found a place to store it undisturbed to look at later. We emptied the truck and came home, but I couldn't do the next thing on the list because now I needed to get out Daniel's microscope and look at it. Is there any question where he got his nerd genes? But, I didn't want my blog friends to feel left out, so then we had to take pictures to share. These are pictures of the stinger under the microscope. Go ahead, admit that it's cool! The long straight part of it was about 1/16" long then it widened to what looks like a little bulb. I won't bore you with all the details of the rest of the day, but I will add that Dale's finger is really swollen tonight, and his evening isn't going quite as planned either. And so it goes with birds, bees, the passing of the seasons, the "never quite as planned" story of my life, etc. etc. And to top it all off, I got my new driver's license in the mail today. That takes me back to the passing of the seasons, the "never quite as planned"..............and raises a new question about how can I make this newly-designed license into the traditional 16th birthday cake. Hmm, I'll put it on my "plan" for tomorrow!!