Scrolling through your Facebook feed can sometimes be a dangerous thing. While I’ve known this fun piece of wisdom for some time, it really only dawned on me the other day when I stumbled upon a post that I normally would have scrolled right past…save for one word in the headline.
That word was “rescue”.
Of course, given the nature of my work, I decided to click on the link to take a peek at the article and see what all the fuss was about. Now to be honest, the title of the short article, and the attached video, just happened to be “Bee and Woman Become Best Friends After Garden Rescue.” I scratched my head and laughed about it for a brief time…then I decided to watch the video.
The video tells (and shows) the tale of a woman who found a bee in her garden without wings. She felt sorry for the little guy (or gal – no discrimination here) and made sure it had access to food, water and shelter. Hours later when she returned from work, the bee was still where she left in a bush in her backyard. This was the beginning of a relationship I could never have predicted.
As the video continues, she recounts the tale of how she provided for the little bee with no wings. She gave the bee a home, ensured it was fed, and cared for it with the same amount of love that someone would give a dog or a cat. My heart melted when I saw the video footage of the bee curling up and falling asleep in the palm of the woman’s hand; the level of trust gained from something that I would have considered nothing more than a mere insect just moments ago was simply amazing. Here was a bee, like any other, trusting this woman completely with its life – no reservations – no stinger. My mind was blown.
The end of the video finally came, and while I was left in tears over this woman and her rescued bee, it was a happy conclusion to what could have been a sadder tale. That bee could have perished, alone, hungry and forgotten. Instead, it made an unexpected friend and managed to live a full life with a caring family. What this woman did really isn’t all that different from what I do for dogs and cats everyday. She managed to offer this bee the 5 freedoms I had come to believe so wholeheartedly: 1) freedom from hunger and thirst, 2) freedom from discomfort (shelter), 3) freedom from pain, injury and disease, 4) freedom to express normal behaviour, and 5) freedom from fear and distress. Not only has the story touched me emotionally, but it has also forever changed my view of the world around me.
For that one day, it was nice to find that Facebook, even with its endless assault of showing me endless garbage, posts bordering on narcissism, the constant drivel of “me! me! me!” and all of the collective evils of the world can still manage to show me something that manages to hit me in such a profound way. So much so, in fact, that while I was doing some gardening yesterday, I instinctively stopped my dog from attacking a bee in the backyard. Not because I thought my dog was in danger of being stung, but because the poor bee was being savagely assaulted by my adorable pooch who was thinking of getting a free snack out of it.
I will never look at a bee the same way again – and for that, I am glad.
The CJBuzz 