The Boston Globe has a story this morning that strikes terror in an aging gardener as well as citizen of the planet. I’ve heard it before: the honey bees are disappearing and the bee experts have called it “Colony Collapse Disorder”.
Colony Collapse Disorder. Jeesh. I’m feelin’ it on language alone, people. And, being Irish, and normally affectively catastrophic about rounding blind corners in general, I’m thinking maybe civilization is collapsing one honey bee at a time.
And, currently, politics in the US is certainly not helping. I think we should look under Hillary’s appeal to blue color workers in Pennsylvania or under one of her pant suit legs and search for dead bees. Obama’s suit is hanging from him like a scarecrow, (the only presidential candidate to lose weight I’m guessing) and thereby leaving suspicious folds of material for dead bees to hide. John McCain? I think his economic plan surely has some wheels up bees laying on the pages, don’t you?
The Globe article said that people are stealing bee hives because of the colony collapse disorder and the importance of the honey bee to the food in our supermarkets. Apparently, a recent heist in Natick, a suburb west of Boston, went awry when the bees either stung the culprit or (my spin) the bee burglars heard the loud “boos” from the surrounding flower beds and decided to leave only with expensive bee equipment and no bees.
Stealing bee hives? Really? Civilization, human civilization, has come to this: where someone wakes up one morning, puts a ski mask over his head and says I gotta get the bees.
Could America’s Most Wanted please, please, please try to catch this guy or gal? I fear it is what our future looks like.
©Pat Coakley 2008
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