Abuzz

by Charles Springer

Sue was easy around bees, like a relative, and the neighbors noticed how she often ended her words with a kind of zzzing sound so when a grease fire from Bob's barbeque swept a crop of backyards last Saturday, Sue lost no time in wrestling the hornet's nest from the dogwood and flighting it to the birdbath out front without so much as a sting and while the bees swarmed all around her, she was having a conversation with them and later that afternoon, she carried out some balls of yarn, cut them into strands and snagged them to the bees' stingers. Needless to say this took awhile and neighbors didn't pay her much mind until about four in the afternoon when the bees started streaming strands all up and down her arms and around her neck and torso and Sue knew to hold very still, as still as still can get, not for fear of getting stung but to make sure this latest in beekeeping fashion would fit perfectly as she somehow knew the bees would have it no other way and when they were done and Sue looked like a queen in her new yellow turtleneck pullover, all of the out-of-work fellas in the neighborhood began to come by everyday to help out with the little odd jobs around the house that were beneath her.