Helping a rained-on-bee
It has been raining quite a bit these past few days, and it got colder again, I don't mind the rain but I don't like the cold.
I found a little bee on the windshield of my car today. I initially thought she was dead since she was legs up. I put my things in the backseat of the car and when I looked again: "Oh, you are alive".
I've been talking aloud to myself more often lately. I think it's the influence of spending so much time around small children at work. The spell takes a little to disperse, so when I arrive home I talk to Ollie the Dog like I talk to the children. It doesn't help that he behaves like one, too.
I offered her a ride back home with me, in the passenger seat. The presence was tiny but I felt it vividly, that I was not driving alone but had a passenger. I wonder if I had put her in a box and treated her like "a thing to transport" I would have felt differently. But now that I write this I don't think I would, the real question is probably "what would someone else have felt" and could they have felt the same?
If I were to say that this insect's life is for me a life the same as others is it understandable? Every one is just trying to live, a single insect's life is short and insignificant compared to ours, but for that single bee, it is her whole life. When I think like this, and when I saw her struggle I couldn't help but feel bad, it did not cost me anything but a little bit of time to help her, so I did.
Back home I offered her a flower and she got to work drying herself up.
Then I put her and her little flower on a dry pot outside. I checked after a while and she was not there anymore.
Drinking away!
Another brief encounter I had recently was with a (common) magpie. We always leave some cat food outside for Carlo the Stray Cat, and we see that some birds come to eat too. Usually, they are tiny birds that steal a quick bite and fly away.
This time there was a magpie just eating away. I was able to take a short video before it flew to hide above the window shutter.
I made my way to the kitchen and hid behind the wall. I went to peek at it to see if it had returned to eat, but it had had the same idea: it was peeking at me from above the shutter. In the end, it flew away, while I was left amused by the moment.