Eclectic Lights by Barry Daniels - HTML preview

“This is a hammer. It is used to drive nails.

Grasshoppers and Bees do not compete with each other for food, territory or matmg rights, and so it was that George the Grasshopper and Bernard Bumblebee became good friends. George went one day to visit the hive, which hung in a large old oak tree, and found Bernard sitting on a branch watching the activity all around him. George noticed that his friend looked troubled, and asked what was wrong.

“It’s the numbers,” Bernard explained. “I just don’t see how we can survive for long the way we’re going. We’re simply not bringing enough food into the hive. The clover field is half a kilometer away, you see, and, although our worker bees are doing their very best, the trip there and back is simply taking too long. If we don’t find a way to speed things up, we won’t survive the winter.”

Surprised, George looked at the activity all around him; everyone seemed to be very busy indeed. A long line of bees snaked out of the hive, along the branch, down the trunk of the tree and away into the distance. A similar line approached the tree from the meadow, climbed the trunk, along the branch and back into the hive, where they delivered their cargo and immediately joined the outgoing line to repeat the process. “Bernard, why are all the worker bees walking back and forth to the meadow?” George asked. “Why do they not fly?”

“Ah, well, it’s a matter of aeronautical engineering, George. We’re simply not built for it. The Queen hired a team of management consultants to do an efficiency study, and fortunately for us there was an aerodynamics expert on the team. He explained to us that our wing area is simply too small to support our large bodies. There’s also the matter of wind resistance — even if we were to get off the ground, our size would make us prey to every gust of wind, and we’d never be able to fly in a straight line. It’s allright for Hornets and Horseflies, with their sleek aerodynamic shapes and smaller bodies, but it’s not for us Bumblebees. You see, in order to fly we’d have to flap our wings so fast that we’d shake the damn things off. I mean, just look how flimsy they are.” Bernard extended his wings, and George saw that they did indeed look too frail to support his friend’s great weight.

Just as he was about to take his leave George was distracted by a buzzing sound, and looked into the distance to see a small spot moving erratically towards the hive. As it came closer George saw that it was a bumblebee, flying very badly but flying nevertheless. The bee landed on the branch, bounced into the air, landed again and walked unsteadily into the hive. Amazed, George turned to Bernard. “Wasn’t that a Bumblebee?”

“Yes.”
“But he was flying!”
“Take no notice of him. That was just Basil showing off.” “But he can fly!”

“Yes, I know. We’ve tried several times to explain it to him, but in the end we had to admit defeat; Basil is just too stupid to understand aerodynamics.”

When you need to do the impossible, make sure that there is at least one person on your team who is too stupid to understand why it can’t be done.