Today is a grey day, cool but not cold. Cloudy but no rain in sight. It's good weather if you need to work on clearing away brush or for doing some outside work on your house. I know this because my neighbor on one side is clearing away brush, and the neighbor on the other side is doing some work on the outside of his house.
It's not such a good day if you're a bumblebee, though. It's late September and pickings are slim. I have one pot of brave marigolds that keep pushing out blooms despite impending Autumn. Marigolds tend to be overlooked in warmer months, when there are fields of wildflowers, roses, rhododendrons and sweet petunias festooning every deck, footpath and window box. Marigolds smell funny and obviously their petals are not highly prized.
I know that Summer is over because the bumblebees are visiting the marigolds. I know it's nearly Fall because these bumblebees are so desperate, they think about landing in my yellow hair, confused by it residing above a tender spring-green shirt. It's fall and bees are feeling desperate. They are also not very smart. Or rather, they are selectively smart. A bumblebee is like a supercomputer that has only one software program installed. The bumblebee can find nectar, return to the nest and convey the exact location of said nectar by doing this little buzzing dance in front of his bee friends, which their little programmed brains can translate into a flight plan. But they can't figure out that I am not a flower.
Early Spring is equally dangerous as bees get all excited by warm weather but find few plants in bloom. In April, these bumblebees were completely fooled by The Boy's bright yellow remote control Mustang as it moved back and forth across the porch. They hovered over it, and followed it as he sent it streaking down the driveway. Again, the bumblebee's internal programming completely failed him. Either he thought the car was a huge, yellow flower or he thought it was the Supreme Leader of all Bumblebees and was trying to follow its instructions. Hey, it's possible. I saw it in the Transformers movie.
The best thing about Autumn, of course, is that soon all insects - the dumb ones, the intelligent ones and the dangerous ones - will all be going into winter hibernation, leaving me free to sit on the deck and enjoy the crisp air and the coming foliage.
Today is a cool day, cloudy and grey. The kind of day that is counting down the last few remaining moments of Summer. It's good weather if you're a little weary of being followed by bumblebees.
On warm summer evenings we have taken to sitting outside on the rear porch, enjoying whatever cool air and breeze may be available. There's a remarkable difference between August nights and those of June and July. Of course, darkness falls much earlier but other things change, imperceptibly at first, then markedly. I am always amazed at how much I didn't know about the wild world of nature just beyond my back door back in the days when I never had time to just sit and watch and listen.
I noticed that the fireflies have gone. For weeks we watched their flashy dances in the brush and over the lawn. Taking their place of evening prominence is the less flashy - indeed invisible - but much louder, cricket population. Their nightly symphonies, the desperate calling of one to another, are often background noise, barely noticed. But once noticed, the cacophony becomes an insistent ringing in the ears.
We sit in the dark, enjoying the solitude and the cover of night. However, on evenings when someone is expected home, the porch light is switched on. I don't care for having the light on. For one thing, I don't enjoy being in the spotlight and have no wish to attract attention to myself. Worse, there are the bugs. The poor moths, completely befuddled by this infernal invention of Edison, flutter about the light, asking directions, trying to navigate by a moon that has suddenly grown exceedingly large and fallen from the sky onto my porch. The beetles fling themselves against the siding, making a pinging noise and then fall all around and in my hair. At some point, we must navigate our way inside through the door without allowing our new-found friends to accompany us.
It's not unusual to hear the occasional buzzing of a mosquito, taking a reconnaissance flight round my ear, looking for a succulent spot to sink her proboscis into. Buzzing I can handle. But the unearthly sound that met my ear last night still makes me shudder.
I was slipping through the open door when a terrible whir and screech sounded by my right ear. I yelled calmly asked "What's that?" while waving a useless hand by my head, having no idea what I was trying to swat.
I cannot describe this sound. It was like no other bug that was ever heard to whizz by my head. It was a high-pitched sound that looped and paused and swept up and down some musical insect scale. It was like a tiny voice crying out some great secret that I must be told before some unknown and menacing fate befell me.
Then I realized what it sounded like.
The Fly.
Not the Jeff Goldblum fly. Not the Brundlefly that retained Jeff's voice and form and Geena Davis as a girlfriend, while growing bristly hairs and spitting on its food.
No, the other fly.
The fly with the tiny human head and the tiny human voice, squealing "Help me!, Help me!".
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