After spending rather long hours thinking of an appropriate title, and whether or not it must possess the alliterative streak, following the tip of a friend, I settled on the afore mentioned group of words.
Having said that, a family trip with cousins and nephews can be very enriching. Hand-in-hand with two nephews, travelling on the paved roads of Puttaparthi, the conversation one engages in, with kids is a memorable and a thoughtful experience altogether. At an inadvertent pause in our walk, the conversation manoeuvred to insects and pests. As he incessantly thumped on black ants and could not contain his thrill at killing harmful insects (since they bite and leave you itchy!), I was acting the Devil's Advocate trying to reproach him for his deeds.(Oh! Makes me sound like a saint). A part of the dialogue went like this :
N1(nephew 1) : Thump! Thump! Muahahaha.....Now, they'll never bite us.
Me : Tut tut tut...don't do that! Let them live in their natural environment. Now look, your brother is imitating you.
N2 : Nooo...no.....i am all itchy! (scratches torso). Thump! Thump.
N1 : Let's get a spider to eat them. Do spiders eat ants?
Me : May be, if it manages to get caught in the spider's web.
N1 : What about bees?
Me : Do you know that, if a bee bites you, it dies?
N1 : Really? But why?
Me : (Not really knowing the answer, hoping it was not a misnomer, I meandered around the question, made a mental note that the sting might be connected to its heart...) I don't know why, but I shall find out for you.
N1 : Is it connected to its heart?
Me : May be, but not too sure.
Meanwhile, N2 was making a racket trying to rout my attention to his dead ant spoils.
So, it turns out that, bees rarely sting unless handled roughly or you get into its way. (I'd know because I got bitten by one, only because I kind of walked through a swarm of 8 bees.) The misnomer which I hoped it would not be, was partly one, as most myths are since they lack completion. So, the sting of worker bees is barbed, so that it embeds the sting on to the victim's skin, tearing loose from its abdomen, leading to its death in minutes. So far, so good. But this holds true only if the victim is an avian or a mammal. So, that's where the catch is! The bee's sting developed for inter-bee combats, and the barbs in that case, improves attack through the chitinous exoskeleton. And they are hazardous as they penetrate the elastic skins of higher animals. So, potential encounters with mammals were of little evolutionary significance. Whether the bees have adapted themselves to fight mammals, and have evolved, I don't know, but that's an interesting possibility. As I pen down these, I am reminded of the day a bee bit me and the havoc the disturbed hive wreaked in my school. But, that's for another day.
Buzzing-ly
Yours
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ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh okayyyyyyyy. i did not know bees use their stings for fighting amongst themselves.
ReplyDeleteShheeesh your nephews are very bloody and ruthless!
I admit that!
ReplyDeleteBut, my mom could not get over the fact that their father (who is my cousin and so, also, my mother's nephew), used to do the exact same thing, of killing ants, when he was their age.
Very interesting conversation Krithika!
ReplyDelete