That much-loved Editor Emeritus at the Great University of Life, Ms PATSY CHAPMAN, is at it again. Not content with playing boulangère to her builders, providing pasties for the postman and generally buttering up her window cleaner, the former newspaper editor-turned-dinner Lady is now providing sanctuary and succour for the local wildlife. Her first client? A bumbling bee. This is what she wrote:
READ ALL ABOUT IT! FACEBOOK SAVES BEE!
I read on FB the other day that while a bee might look dead it might just be exhausted. If so, wrote my FB friend, it can be revived with sugar and water.
Lo and behold! What turned up in my garden this morning? Nothing less than a bumble bee on its last legs. At death’s door, so to speak. What was I to do?
Facebook ‘B’ A&E to the rescue!
I ran to the kitchen, mixed some sugar with water and laid it on a spoon infront of my ailing bumblebee beside my open front door.
The poor wee thing sipped some of the life-saving serum (sorry, syrup), crawled a few inches and then and fell over again. Mary Poppins-like, I pursued the patient and pushed the spoonful of sugar under its proboscis and wouldn’t let it be (‘bee’, geddit?) until it had taken another slurp.
Then, miracle of Facebook miracles, my bee-draggled buzzing buddy flew away, presumably making a beeline for the very next flower that beckoned. Leaving me to worry about the consequences for both of us following our Emergency Ward (F)hive operation. . .
For me, it was the sugar water I spilled in my rush to get to Bee A&E, which probably means an imminent Invasion of the Ants.
For the bee? Alas, I fear I may have overdosed her in my urgent desire to see her airborne. She will probably have developed dia-bee-tes (sorry, couldn’t resist it!) by now.
When I told all on Facebook my friend Sheron Boyle was a little ho-hum (another minor ‘bee’ pun!) about it.
“I’m surprised you didn’t make it a three course meal, like you do for every other bugger who comes into your lurve nest,” she wrote.
“Yes,” I admitted. “My window cleaner had a sandwich between doing the fronts and backs today.”
And my pal Paul Sutherland, quick as a flash, wrote back: “I never knew there was an A&E for Bs.”
Which I thought was too sweet a pun to miss. So I pinched it!
