Love is in the air. Literally.

Angela's post today got me thinking about bugs. Specifically, the giant bumble bees who are doing some sort of creepy bee mating dance outside my kitchen window again this year. (Romantic though I am, I still can't imagine how this sort of act can be anything less than prickly and awful. Perhaps it's all the buzzing, but I wish they'd get a room. )

One day when I was in grad school, I came home to hear THAT DOG barking her little furry head off. I went in to see what the problem was and there, before my barking dog, approximately 1 gazillion lady bugs were SWARMING over my wall. When I'd left that morning, there were no ladybugs. But in two short hours, they'd arrived in record numbers, as if declaring my bedroom headquarters for what appeared to be a nationwide convention. It was like a scene from a horror movie, when some innocent creature I used to think of as cute and lucky reproduced with such mind-blowing fertility as to make make wonder if they might not, in fact, be taking over the world.

Our apartment had never, to that point, been of the buggy variety, so we had nothing in the way of Raid or Off with which to call this party to an end. I tried flailing at the ladies with my biggest clog-like shoe, but to no avail - it was like they magically multiplied faster when I dared disturb their meeting. I'm bigger than those bugs, I told myself. And theoretically, at least, I'm smarter. And that's when the answer came: I grabbed my industrial-size can of Freeze & Shine Superhold Hair Spray, and shellacked those babies to the wall.

Our vacuum cleaner buzzed for two or three days after that, which is why now, I leave those bumble bees alone. I'll let them mate on my porch all afternoon, so long as they go elsewhere to deliver.