# NUTS

*Image:  Bee in the style of Jackson Pollock, generated by Stable Diffusion*

By [The Late Bloomin’ Author](https://paragraph.com/@tlba) · 2023-03-11

bees, pronouns, almonds, friend of the earth, 2025, rain, climate change, humor, satire

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I know not if it were a He Bee, or a She Bee.   
The He or She Bee shuffled past me on the concrete patio floor.  
The He or She Bee appeared to be wiggling His, or Her, Behind.  
Shaking something off.  An exoskeleton of sorts?   
Maybe.  
  
I also don’t know what be They pronouns either.  
To be/not to be?  Spelled with only one “e?”      
Edgy.  Bee progressive.  
That’s the buzz from all the busy-bodies.  It’s nuts!  
  
Did you know that Bees pollinate almond trees?  
One Bee per 20 of those nuts.  
No bees.  No almond trees.  I like almonds.  
  
Triple digit temperatures.  
The weather people teasing us with suggestions of possible thunderstorms.  
Those avoided us, and They say this will be the Norm from now on.  
The New Norm; or, The New Normal, if you’re formal.  
If you’re hip though—You know tempus fugits.  
  
Hay lay now, where grass lay before.  
Yet a not too distant golf course be as green as  
The neighbor’s new fake lawn next door.   
Funny that.  
  
Lakes and rivers drying up, revealing long dead secrets.  
Missing pieces.  
Will the eventual rain be as relentless like in that book _Friend of The Earth_  
by T.C. Boyle? As I recall, that was set in the year 2025.  
t’s 2023.  Wonder where we’ll be two years out?  
  
Perhaps it was a boy bee after all.  
I read that were it a male honeybee, they do nothing but mate and are stingless.  
We’re all familiar with He’s like that in the human world  
And who, not surprisingly, are often cashless. 

I fell down a rabbit hole with this bee thing.  
I had the sudden urge to find out how many types be in existence.  There be many.  
The perils of a smart phone and internet connection.   
Get this.  A bee called Megachile Pluto is the largest bee in the world.  
Have a quick gander at your thumb—that’s  how big it is!  
  
Adult thumb sizes vary of course, but I don’t need to see any bees even the size of my slender, arthritic thumbs floating around.  {My apologies to any readers who are absent their thumb(s), or whose thumbs are not slender.  This is my lived-thumb experience.}  
  
The Smithsonian article (link below) described Megachile Pluto as a _massive unit_.   
I couldn’t have put it better myself.   
  
It’s raining in New York right now says my iPhone.  
I didn’t need to know that but here we are.   
It also said it would be five days before we get a 50% chance of rain; or,  
If you prefer, precipitation.  
I prefer rain.  It’s easier to pronounce.  Precipitation sounds like posh rain.  
  
Well enough of this pluvial play; which, by the way  
Relates to having much rain.   
Wow.

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*Originally published on [The Late Bloomin’ Author](https://paragraph.com/@tlba/nuts)*