Be afraid. Be very afraid. And if I was cheesy, I'd write "bee" instead of "be".

Did you know that bees have tongues? I did not.

I did know that I don't particularly like bees, delicious honey and pollinate-the-earth-so-I-can-eat-fruits-and-veggies notwithstanding; and especially not bees and swimming pools-- because once when I was nine and swimming in a neighbor's pool, I put my hand on the edge of the pool (to halt a particularly fast swim from one side to the other, I'm sure) and there was a bee there and it stung me. Didn't like being pressed under my hand for some reason, but whatever, that's no need for bitter revenge. (Joke's on you though, bee, because YOU DIED for that revenge. Kamikaze death.)

Anyway, that was the last time a bee had the misfortune to sting me, until just a couple of years ago at my own pool... The bees in my neighborhood think it's a great place to get a little drink, and they like to fly around and light on the surface, not realizing it's a pretty high-risk maneuver just for a little pure chlorinated water-- usually they get watered down in the wings, and never make it back out of the pool. As a pre-drink aphrodisiac, they also like to come around and take a sniff of my Coppertone SPF8 as I'm floating around, which I can't really blame them for. And that may seem all tame and commune-with-nature-y, but I have a healthy fear of these bees because I see them attempting subversive attacks, either with sneaky oh-hey-you-smell-great-so-let-me-get-closer flybys, or under the guise of using my floating lounger as a personal liferaft to dry off their sodden wings (if they can paddle close enough to get on).  When this happens, I usually splash water in retaliatory attack and then flop/shriek straight off my lounger and go underwater, breathing through reeds until the bee leaves.

Well, this one time I was watching a bee flounder in the water in my pool, and I started feeling less dubious and more gentle and Mother-Nature-esque, and thought maybe I should save him. So, I got the skimmer thingy and used it as a rescue pole, fished him out of the water, and set the net down gently on the side of the pool so he could crawl off. I watched with a proud-mother closed-lip grin on my face as he shook the water off his wings and took a tentative jump into the air, and flew off into the bright blue sky. Then he promptly circled back around and stung me on my inner thigh.

And-- OUCH. (the poison coursing through my entire leg, that is, not my emotion and betrayed pride-- who cares about THAT...) And-- again... really, bee? You know you're going to die after stinging, right--? Was it worth it? Senseless death.

SO--

Today, I was sitting on the edge of a friend's pool, writing letters with my feet in the water, when I noticed a bee was sharing my towel with me. I didn't have any reeds handy and was kind of too relaxed to jump into the water as it was, so I just watched him for a while and figured I'd whack him into the pool if he started getting frisky or doing anything fishy. He was pretty preoccupied with grooming himself anyway, so I didn't feel there was imminent danger... and it was pretty cool to observe (and I felt very National Geographic). He seemed to be stroking his goatee a lot with his hands, and then would use his hind legs to scrape the top and bottom of his... bottom. I congratulated myself both on my keen observations and my knowledgable bee-body-part vocabulary, and thought maybe I should take some field notes. Then I realized... heeeyyyy, bees don't have goatees! and looked closer (with my supersonic eyes, not by leaning closer, I don't have a death wish) and watched more carefully, and... GROSS! It was a long TONGUE that was coming out of there, and he'd wipe his hands on it and then smooth back the hair on his head. Di- sgu- sting. Sure, kittens do it too, but kittens are SUPPOSED to, and everyone knows kittens aren't doing it out of male vanity, which is worse. Anyway, that tongue was GROSS. Long and thin and tapered at the end into a slight curl, which is even grosser. It was longer than the length of the bee's head, even. And pink. Dark pink with a blackish tip. Gross gross gross. The site of it made me rethink french kissing, that's for sure.

Anyway, I quietly got up to get my iPhone to try to capture it in a photograph (I may have been grossed out, but I was still National Geographic), and first successfully snapped the non-action photo of the bee you see at the top of this post, but then couldn't see its movements if I was looking at the screen, so I held my phone at what I thought was the correct angle and would hit the capture button every time that tongue came out. Here is the award-winning shot I got of the bee and its tongue by doing that:

but since that didn't really work and he got bored and flew away before I could try again, here is a photo I found via the Google-net of a bee with its tongue out:

so you can be sufficiently grossed out by it as well. (Here, by the way, is the link to this exceptional photo--I don't know to whom to give the photo cred, so you can go look for yourself.)

Anyway. You learn something new every day, I guess.

(... And thus, I return to blogging :)