If you’re reading this, that means I’m a survivor.  It means I’m no longer curled up on the couch armed with my Dirt Devil, a rolled up newspaper, and a bowl of popcorn. It means I’m not trapped in my kitchen, looking up at the ceiling in terror. There aren’t many things that stir up a good panic in me quite like a bee that’s managed to sneak into the sanctuary of my 450 sq. ft. shoe box.

It was Tuesday morning. There I was, in my kitchen, noshing on breakfast and attempting to pack a lunch when I saw it. IT. A bee, drunkenly flying around my entryway, crashing into walls and light fixtures with all the grace of a rodeo clown on a bucking bronco.

For a good ten minutes, I watched him (I don’t know the moment he went from an it to a he… he just seemed like a dude), a menace in my own home. Anyone remember the scene from Jurassic Park when the kids are hiding in the kitchen from the velociraptors? Yeah, swap out the dinos for one bee and change out the kids for a 24 year old woman eating peanut butter toast and it’s pretty much the same life threatening situation.

Is this an over-reaction, you ask?

No. And if you think it is, then start your own blog. Now keep reading.

Anyway, I clutched a dish towel in one hand, ready to strike. Problem was, he wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to get a good swat in. What seemed like an hour was merely ten minutes, but if I stayed there any longer, I’d be late for work. I ran with the towel over my head (laugh it up guys…..) to the other end of my apartment (kind of like in any Jurassic Park scene when someone’s being chased by a T-Rex), and did the bare minimum of my morning routine.

By the time I’d gathered my things and scurried to the front door, I’d stopped hearing the crashing of his clumsy body against light bulbs (Bring me to the light, he buzzed!). I turned to look at where I thought the bee had been hiding.

He was gone. Before he could start breathing (buzzing?) in my ear like a psycho in a horror movie, I bolted out the door. For the rest of the day all I could think about was where that sick bastard was hiding. I didn’t have any windows open in the apartment, and there’s the SLIGHTEST chance that he’d been able to slip under the space in my front door… but it still wasn’t entirely likely. A perfect locked-room mystery, no doubt.

My paranoia was consuming me the entire day. It got so bad that I enlisted the help of my neighbor from another (bee-less) building in the complex to join the stakeout in my apartment. Still, after shaking the blinds and peering cautiously into closets, we found nothing. He, for better or worse, was no where to be found.

“Maybe he died somewhere,” my neighbor said as we gave up the search and decided to hunt around for some Thai food instead.

Which is all fine and well…

but when we returned to my apartment later that night, we still didn’t even see him. We didn’t even find a body.

To this day, I still don’t know what happened to him. Did he die? Did he escape? Is he hiding in a light fixture or in the dark corner of my closet, waiting to ambush me? Was he just a mere figment of my imagination (NO.)?

We’ll never know. Or maybe we’ll know when I finally decide to clean my lil’ studio. In the meantime, if any of my three readers want to come over and stand sentry outside my apartment, I’ll bake you cookies. I noticed a giant grasshopper in the stairwell last night so it’s only a matter of time until he finds his way in…

-e