Bees

One thing we have noticed since being here in jolly old England is the lack of bugs. That's (obviously) not to say that there are NO bugs but they are few and far between. Especially the flying ones. Well, we certainly saw a flying one tonight. I'm sitting here at the table on my computer and Chris is on the couch on his computer and he says, did you hear that noise? I didn't. Then a few seconds later he says, there it is again! He said it was a strange humming sound. Then he jumped up off the couch, freaking me out, and went to the other side of the room. So the noise turned out to be.....

A giant bumble bee! It was flying around a bit and then landed on top of the bookshelf and just sat there for a while. We were trying to figure out what to do: kill it or try to shoo it out the window. We didn't have a fly swatter; I suggested spraying it with hairspray, but Chris said he didn't want to kill it just try to make it leave. Then he got an idea and came back with these:

He came back with what our old shower curtain rod and a tennis racket (in its case). First he used the tennis racket to swing hard right by the bee hoping to blow it or scare it or something and that wasn't working. So he tried poking it with the curain rod but it didn't move! After a few minutes longer Chris decided he wasn't so concerned if the bee died or not. So then he had it cornered against the wall and decided to use the rod to smash him up against it. After a few extra pokes just to make sure, the bee lay dead on the floor. Even though I knew it was dead I still approached rather timidly to get this shot:


It probably doesn't come across in the picture but that bee was so huge! So after all that Chris asked if I would pick it up off the floor! Which was fine - I would rather be the one to pick it up off the floor than be the one to try and kill it. Anyway, fun times at the Lynch's.