From Worse to...Much Worse: Laura Gets Some New Neighbors

You know how that tree fell on my house? And then Dad and Paul smashed one of the back windows because they didn't understand Newton's Three Laws of Motion?

Well, clearly we had to file a claim with our insurance company.

Mr. Insurance Agent Guy told us an adjuster would call us, talk to us, visit us, verify that, yes, a tree DID fall on the house, and then we could get things fixed. But as I told you earlier, Insurance Adjuster said, "You are too far away for me to travel to you," and "I will have this reassigned." We were told to wait. A new adjuster would get in touch with us.

We waited. Nothing.

After the two weeks Insurance Adjuster told us to wait, Mom was suspicious. She called. Mr. Insurance Agent Guy was in shock. No one had been to see us yet? So he called the office where Insurance Adjuster worked to find out what had happened. Then Insurance Adjuster called us.

You see, when the case had been "reassigned," it was sent away from Insurance Adjuster. And then it was sent back. Basically, it was "reassigned" to HIM, so really, it had not been reassigned at all, it was just a bureaucratic black hole, like the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit.

Insurance Adjuster guy had clearly been yelled at by Boss Insurance Adjuster, because he made it very clear that this was in no way his fault.

(I'm just not even going to say anything else about that...you know what I'm thinking.)

Mr. Insurance Agent Guy was Unhappy about this Situation. So, HE is going to come and tell us we can go ahead and fix things. So that's good. Something can finally be done, right?

Except, no.

Yesterday, Mom was walking Darcy. Dad was with her. Darcy was sniffing and chasing things and running around. Dad and Mom were looking at the tree from the river bank, not from the house the way we usually see it.

They noticed a few holes in the tree. No one had seen them before, due to the giant branch that used to obscure them, but there they are. Who knows where they came from. Do birds do that? Raccoon? Squirrels? Whatever.

But Mom noticed the holes in the tree weren't ordinary holes in a tree. They were moving, sort of. And so was something in the air around the holes and--oh.

Crap.

You see, when the tree decided to die, because clearly it was a choice by that tree to screw with us, it had become a home to various woodland creatures. I know birds have nested in it, definitely squirrels, but they have all moved on. The new family that's moved into the tree is about 40,000 strong, and I hear their mom is giant, fat, and lazy. Also she bosses everybody around while she lies back in her cell all day, shooting out babies.

Because she has her own cell, in the BEE HIVE where she LIVES.

At this point, Nature is flipping us off. Nature is mooning us. Nature is making obscene hand gestures, and we are Its target. Nature was like, "You like falling asleep to thunderstorms? Okay!" Then Nature said, "You love trees? Really? You planted so many! You must love them! So have a tree!" And then it hurled one on the house. Now it's saying, "You wanted to save the bees, didn't you? So SAVE THEM." And it gave us an entire hive of bees to take care of.

Because you can't just kill bees, what with that hive collapse thing.

Now, none of us have seen the bees up close, so maybe they aren't really honey bees. Having honey bees would kind of be a good thing, because they are having so much trouble, healthy hives are great to find. I'm sure someone would want our bees, in that case.

And I suppose it's great that we didn't send some guy up the tree with a chainsaw only to have him come running down, followed by a swarm of angry bees.

If our luck stays the same, though, these bees are Africanized honey bees, otherwise known as Killer Bees.

No one will want to get rid of our deadly-deadly bees. They will want to leave them alone, and it will take us even longer to get the tree, which is dead and could fall down at any moment, cut up and taken away.

This is what will happen. The tree will fall down. On the house. Through it, really. A swarm of angry, deadly-deadly bees will rise up out of the tree and come for us while we are sleeping. We will try to run, but only the cat would escape because Dad is a bigger target and the rest of us don't like running, plus I have asthma, so I would probably die first, swelling up like a giant Laura Balloon, just like that Violet Beauregarde girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I will be a blueberry-shaped corpse, and they won't be able to fit me into a coffin, so they'll have to have one custom-made for people shaped like berries.

What do you even do to get rid of bees? I've never needed to try to make them move before. I mean, bees won't move to a new place because they'd be in a better school district or to be closer to family and yarn stores. Can you bribe bees? Can I get a new bee-house for them and say, "Here bees! Come live here, and I'll give you THIS," while I show them a giant flower I bought from the garden supply store?

Do you think that would work?