Topic: A disturbing experience.

[Quemaqua]

So I was walking home today along the subway tracks as I generally do, daydreaming or what have you, when I realize I'm walking on something.  I look more closely, and I see that there's a bee or two crawling around amidst a bunch of little pellet-like objects.  Berries, maybe.  I continue walking, still not paying much attention, until I see a couple more bees.  Then I realize that all the little pellets aren't berries... they're more bees.  Dead bees.  Hundreds upon hundreds of them, in fact, and they're sprawled out here dead and dying all along the path.  It's one thing to see a whole bunch of dead flies or pests of some kind, but bees?  It was depressing, and of course what immediately springs to mind is the whole dying bee thing everyone was talking about.  Now I didn't pay all that much attention to that, and I'm really starting to wish I had.  I had some other stuff going on in my life that was taking my attention from world affairs and such, and I meant to go back and read about it but didn't.

So I keep walking, and the bees just keep going.  Hundreds of tiny corpses stretching for at least 5 city blocks.  After a few blocks they start to thin out quite a bit, but I keep seeing one or two here and there, and I don't know how long I must have been walking on them before I noticed.  They were like stuck in my shoes, it was both gross and sad.

I was watching all the people going by, and apparently I was the only one to notice them, which weirded me out even more.  Bike riders going by every 10 seconds, a ripped guy with no shirt running down the path on his jog, a few couples holding hands... and not one seemed to notice it at all.

Now I'm home and I just plain don't know what to make of it.  Given that all these guys were just along the subway tracks there, I have to wonder whether or not it had something to do with that somehow.  Why just along there?  Anyway... my day was really pretty depressing, but for some reason this just made me feel like complete shit.  I'm concerned.

[idolminds]

Thats really strange.

[TheOtherBelmont]

That is really odd.  Also I'm confused about "the whole dying bee thing everyone was talking about".

[WindAndConfusion]

Colony Collapse Disorder. Key points:

• It's not really new, it's been documented since the late 19th century.
  
• It was originally called colony collapse disease, but entomologists aren't sure whether it's really a "disease" or not, so they changed the name recently. (It was perhaps because of this recent name change that the media decided CCD is "new.")
  
• The Albert Einstein quote is fake. (You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.)
  

[shock]

I fucking love when people say something they think is profound, then just tack on Einstein's name because the majority of people will just go "wow" and agree with it.

[gpw11]

Fuck, I totally wish it was mosquitos instead.

[idolminds]

That we can all agree with.

Or ticks. I HATE ticks....

[gpw11]

Shit, imagine standing on those tracks as millions of ticks fell on you.  I think I'd run so fast I'd break the sound barrier....and then die of blood loss.

[Ghandi]

That is pretty sad. I thought that it was a disease, but then again I haven't followed the story since it first aired. I find it odd that so many would be on the streets of CA.

[Pugnate]

So I was walking home today along the subway tracks as I generally do, daydreaming or what have you, when I realize I'm walking on something.  I look more closely, and I see that there's a bee or two crawling around amidst a bunch of little pellet-like objects.  Berries, maybe.  I continue walking, still not paying much attention, until I see a couple more bees.  Then I realize that all the little pellets aren't berries... they're more bees.  Dead bees.  Hundreds upon hundreds of them, in fact, and they're sprawled out here dead and dying all along the path.  It's one thing to see a whole bunch of dead flies or pests of some kind, but bees?  It was depressing, and of course what immediately springs to mind is the whole dying bee thing everyone was talking about.  Now I didn't pay all that much attention to that, and I'm really starting to wish I had.  I had some other stuff going on in my life that was taking my attention from world affairs and such, and I meant to go back and read about it but didn't.

So I keep walking, and the bees just keep going.  Hundreds of tiny corpses stretching for at least 5 city blocks.  After a few blocks they start to thin out quite a bit, but I keep seeing one or two here and there, and I don't know how long I must have been walking on them before I noticed.  They were like stuck in my shoes, it was both gross and sad.

I was watching all the people going by, and apparently I was the only one to notice them, which weirded me out even more.  Bike riders going by every 10 seconds, a ripped guy with no shirt running down the path on his jog, a few couples holding hands... and not one seemed to notice it at all.

Now I'm home and I just plain don't know what to make of it.  Given that all these guys were just along the subway tracks there, I have to wonder whether or not it had something to do with that somehow.  Why just along there?  Anyway... my day was really pretty depressing, but for some reason this just made me feel like complete shit.  I'm concerned.

Dude... I was watching this show on Fox and they were talking about this. Lots of honey farms in North America have reported bees suddenly dying. They said that it was like the bees had their own version of AIDS.

[Cobra951]

That story sent a chill down my spine.  It's so eerily descriptive.  Why don't you use it in some of your fiction?

[sirean_syan]

This is that path in the narrow parkish thing that more or less goes under the tracks, right? Not the sidewalk along San Pablo?

Bizarre stuff. Almost stranger that no one else seemed to notice, but not surprising. It seems like people are often oblivious to too much stuff.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, directly under the tracks.  Going to walk a different route home today, I think.

It makes me wonder about the huge swarm of... whatever I saw a month or so ago.  There was some giant cloud of insects going crazy at this one point near the station.  It looked like maybe they were wasps or hornets that had built a nest on the underside of the tracks and then had it disturbed.  But whatever they were, there were tons.  The cloud of them was the size of a house, but they weren't going anywhere.  Just buzzing around seeming pissed.  No idea if that's related, nor if they were indeed wasps or hornets like I thought.

And maybe I will use it, Cobra.  Hadn't thought of that.  Which is weird given that an awful lot of my experiences wind up in my writing.  Maybe it was just because this one was actually shocking where most aren't things I'm that sensitive to.  I have an entire story based around a woman who threw herself from the roof of the building across from where I work, but that didn't disturb me at all the way the bees did.  Go figure.

[Pugnate]

That story sent a chill down my spine.  It's so eerily descriptive.  Why don't you use it in some of your fiction?

haha that reminded me of Stewie when he is talking to Brian about his book....and Stewie's voice keeps reaching a higher pitch.

But yea, I have to admit, reading that gave me chills as well.

[shock]