At this point, the typical RPI student is desperately holding onto these last few weeks of warm weather before the six-month New York winter sweeps in. Not me, though; I can’t wait for the snowstorms, sub-zero temperatures, and treacherous ice patches. Why would I possibly look forward to something like that? I’m not crazy; I just really, really hate bees.
Well, perhaps ‘bees’ is too narrow a category. I hate all stinging insects, probably with a passion greater than this paper will allow me to print. I love Starship Troopers, refuse to play Zerg in Starcraft, and drink bottles of honey just to waste their hard work. I’ve committed numerous traffic violations by making sudden, illegal turns so that I could run into one with my car, and have considered training in a martial art solely so that I could punch bugs in the face—and knock them unconscious—in mid-flight. But I digress. That isn’t the focus of this article.
About a week ago, I noticed that somebody had spilled a Slushee outside of Russell Sage Dining Hall. That person is my hero. Throughout the course of the day, bees slowly gathered all over the cherry-flavored sugar water; at 8 am there were maybe four or five, and by 5 pm, the wet spot on the cement was coated with at least 200 bees.
If this Slushee is attracting more bees, why does the person who spilled it deserve a Gold Star Sticker of Excellence? Because he’s attracting bees to a place where I’m not. That means there are 200 fewer bees to buzz in my face while I’m walking to class, and 200 fewer bees to attack me when I walk out of the Union holding anything containing sugar. Forget shuttle tracking, TAs, and even the “ratio,” this is an improvement in my undergraduate experience.
I want to take this one step further. Every day, somebody should spill a Slushee, soda, or fruit juice somewhere on campus—preferably somewhere nobody ever goes, like, say, behind Sage Labs or that awkward space between the CII and the RPI Playhouse (notice how I didn’t recommend the Biotech Center or EMPAC—whoops, too late now). This would keep the populated areas free of bees, wasps, hornets, and those types until the winter months come along and force them to hang out underground or wherever. Of course, if I really had my way, I’d use maple syrup instead of Slushees, and in the end I’d trap them inside of it and freeze them with liquid nitrogen. Then, I’d shatter each and every one of them like that scene from Terminator 2—man, that part was awesome.
