The Bird and the Bee

A frequent go round on my cd player of late has been a band called "The Bird and the Bee," which seems particularly ironic as a particularly bird and bee have been the bane of my existence for the past several weeks.

My current home has a lovely deck where I have a lovely patio set that I very much like to sit at in the mornings or in the evenings - never during the day when the white hot Tennessee sun threatens immediate cancer of all cells. Unfortunately, my deck has some angry squatters on it who are absolutely bent on taking over my deck. The first is a robin, that lovely bird I am wont to speak highly of in all other instances as it is my home state bird and I have never had any reason to speak negatively of it before this time. When she nipped the top off of one of my basil plants to make a nest, I was annoyed. But she was a building a nest on my porch! How wonderful! She would roost over her brood as I was brooding over mine! What wonderful serendipity, I thought! I moved the basil plants to the front where she could no longer pluck from them and watched her from afar as she continued to build her home from dry grass and twigs around the yard.

But serendipity, alas, is a temporary, unstable state at best. Any time I have since walked out the door to my deck, whether it be to get to the yard below or to take my rightful place at my patio set, the robin alights angrily, fussing back and forth between roof and telephone wire, bickering and hollering at me in what can only be called a southern squawking. I try to reassure her, tell her to look at me, won't you? I have a baby of my own to protect and there is no way I am going to upset your's. Some days it works. She remains on the telephone wire, eyeing me watchfully, but seemingly comforted by my lack of movement toward her nest. Most days it doesn't work and as her babies come closer to cracking through their shells, she is more wild in her protectiveness, dive bombing me the minute I open the door. No amount of soothing assurances or angry words of defense back to her can calm her down.

And she has an accomplice, a big fat old bumblebee, a male - though I don't have any assurance he is male other than instinct - has also started dive bombing me more ferociously than the robin before him. The minute the door leading out to the deck creaks, he strikes and is relentless. I asked Michael to go out and kill him for me and he complied, swatting and swatting, but he never got anywhere. I've watched from below the deck to see if the bee has his own brood to protect, but there are no signs of his home or any mates anywhere near the door he guards like a Guantanamo cell.

I fear the bee the most. I watch him through the glass window and he appears to float in mid-air, watching me with those compound eyes, seeing hundreds of me yet unafraid to defend his territory. I hate him. I run from him. I drop things and scramble away from his fat buzzing and crazy, unpredicatable dashes and darts.

There is only one solution: I have to give up the deck. There is no beating them and soon, we will be moving anyway. The next tenant will have to take up the fight. I hope the robin will be left alone, but that bee, I am comfortable with any fatal fate that may fall upon him.