Author Gary Taylor ◦
Stuck on a Hakea with a spike through the wing, just when you thought your day couldn’t get any worse, some big (possible) predator looms in over you… “Oh crap…” 😆
Just a Euro honey bee but there’s a couple of things in this, firstly is the huge needle sharp spines (that most Hakeas are protected by). The bush here is thick with them and I’m a “shorts ‘n thongs” bloke (I’d rather something nasty run across my foot than go down a boot or up a jean leg and feel trapped 🙂) so I cop ’em all the time but it never ceases to amaze me how you don’t really notice them (don’t get me wrong, sharp enough to make you bleed you still feel them 😄) but it’s only when you’ve just seen a Brown snake or Mouse spider or cranky Tarantula hawk wasp a bit too close for comfort and you’re doin’ the “Cotton eyed Joe” barn dance… Where did he come from, where did he go?..😅 (Raise those feet and slap your legs now y’all 😆) and suddenly you back into one and it pierces your calf muscle or back of your thigh that you nearly shit and move fast enough to actually ‘do see do’ yourself 🤣 Another thing is, crikey mate, no I’m not gonna eat you, but how did you manage to get stuck like that?… And lookin’ at the tears in your wings, maybe not the first time…😅
Reminds me of when I worked at the Catholic primary school decades ago and the caretaker of the Bishop’s house and Cathedral would come and have morning tea with me in my workshop… Every day, ants would get into the kettle so after boiling it, and before I filled our cups, I’d tip the first pour (with most of the ants) onto the concrete floor… But sometimes he’d get to the workshop before me and make the cups… One day, while scooping dead ants out of our coffee, he said “Why is it that whenever I make the coffee there’s ants in it, but not when you make it?…” I said “‘Cos I tip the ants out first…” 😃 He let out belly laugh of sudden realisation and said “Ohhh that’s why you do it, I just thought you were just a clumsy c###!..” 🤣
So to the final point, just a Euro, the enemy as far as our native bees go, but she’s old and battered, she hasn’t got long left… And Karma doesn’t discriminate. It’s our fault she’s here not hers, so I set her free…
Like the little girl on the beach throwing starfish back into the sea… an adult telling her there was miles of beach and it would make no difference… Then throwing another in she smiled and said “It did to that one…” 🙂 A life is a life, I suspect hers is nearly done but I couldn’t leave her pinned to a Hakea… everyone knows if you provide an “easy meal” for a bird or other wild animal you will destroy it’s hunting instincts and it’ll die 😆
Photograph © Gary Taylor
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