Sometimes it's the little things - and little lives - that count the most.
This morning I woke up, dragged myself sleepily to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and, much to my surprise, nearly stood on a bee that was feebly dragging itself along the ground, unable to fly. I imagine he and I were in a similar state of grogginess at that hour of the morning, but he was clearly in need of a bit more than coffee.
Now, I have a pretty intense phobia of bugs (especially the buzzing, biting, or stinging kind), so my first reaction was to let out a small shriek and jump at an uncharacteristically high speed out of the way. But I'm not one of those people who kills bugs on sight just because I don't like them. It was clear the little guy needed help.
I'm not ashamed to admit that my girlfriend and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement when it comes to uninvited house-guests: she deals with spiders, insects, and other bug types, and I handle rodents and reptiles. So I quickly summoned her to deal with the task at hand.
True to form, she sprung into action by mixing together a cup of sugar water, laying down a teaspoonful in front of the patient, and gently helping him towards the spoon to get a drink.
Slowly but surely, the bee began to take in some of this sweet medicine. Thanks to his rapid metabolism, it wasn't long before he was moving around a bit more, even climbing onto the spoon itself!
We took him outside to warm up in the sun, where he drank a little more and started climbing around the outside of the cup to stretch his bee's knees.
Within minutes, he took off, rejuvenated once more. He even hovered for a moment right in front of her face, as if to say thank you, before darting off at an incredible speed to the nearest flower. The day was saved!
Obviously she's not the first to save a bee, and she didn't do it so that we could post it online for everyone to see what a good person she is (she's never even been on Steemit, although I've tried to explain it to her). She did it because all life is important. It's that simple.
A lot of the time, it takes almost no effort to save a whole life. It's something we should all think about more often when we come into contact with lives - including human ones - that need our help. Not to mention the fact that bees all over the world are in serious trouble right now, so they need all the help they can get!
Save a life, save the world - it's all in a day's work!