It was a Bee

Damn Tetse Flies….

My Dog stepped on a Bee.

“He had read someplace—in a Sunday supplement piece or a back-of-the-book newsmagazine article—that 7 percent of all automobile fatalities go unexplained. No mechanical failure, no excessive speed, no booze, no bad weather. Simply one-car crashes on deserted sections of road, one dead occupant, The Driver, unable to explain what had happened to him. The article had included an interview with a state trooper who theorized that many of these so-called “foo crashes” resulted from insects in the car. Wasps, a bee, possibly even a spider or moth. The driver gets panicky, tries to swat it or unroll a window to let it out. Possibly the insect stings him. Maybe The Driver just loses control. Either way it’s bang!… all over. And the insect, usually completely unharmed, would buzz merrily out of the smoking wreck, looking for greener pastures. The trooper had been in favor of having pathologists look for insect venom while autopsying such victims, Jack recalled.

She went back to the door, hesitated there, and turned back. 

Then, with a deep and almost painful timidity, she offered the only editorial suggestion she ever made to him. 'Maybe it was a bee.'

He had already dropped his gaze to the sheet of paper in the typewriter; he was looking for the hole. 

He wanted to get Misery back to Mrs Ramage's cottage before he knocked off, and he looked back up at Annie with carefully disguised impatience. 'I beg pardon?'

‘A bee,' she said, and he saw a blush creeping up her neck and over her cheeks. Soon even her ears were glowing. 'One person in every dozen is allergic to bee-venom. I saw lots of cases of it before .. before I retired from service as an R.N. The allergy can show in lots of different ways. Sometimes a sting can cause a comatose condition which is . . . is similar to what people used to call . . . uh . . . catalepsy.'

Now she was so red she was almost purple.

Paul held the idea up briefly in his mind and then tossed it on the scrap-heap. A bee could have been the cause of Miss Evelyn-Hyde's unfortunate live burial; it even made sense, since it had happened in mid-spring; in the garden, to boot. But he had already decided that credibility depended on the two live burials' being related somehow, and Misery had succumbed in her bedroom. The fact that late fall was hardly bee-season was not really the problem. 

The problem was the rarity of the cataleptic reaction. He thought Constant Reader would not swallow two unrelated women in neighbouring townships being buried alive six months apart as a result of beestings.

Yet he could not tell Annie that, and not just because it might rile her up. He could not tell her because it would hurt her badly, and in spite of all the pain she had afforded him, he found he could not hurt her in that way. He had been hurt that way himself.

He fell back on that most common writers'-workshop euphemism: 'It's got possibilities, all right. I'll drop it into the hopper, Annie, but I've already got some ideas in mind. It may not fit.'

‘Oh, I know that — you're the writer, not me. just forget I said anything. I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be s — '

But she was gone, her heavy tread almost running down the hallway to the parlor.

bug (n.)

"insect, beetle," 1620s (earliest reference is to bedbugs), of unknown origin, probably (but not certainly) from or influenced by Middle English bugge "something frightening, scarecrow" (late 14c.), a meaning obsolete since the "insect" sense arose except in bugbear (1570s) and bugaboo (q.v.).

 

Probably connected with Scottish bogill "goblin, bugbear," or obsolete Welsh bwg "ghost, goblin" (compare Welsh bwgwl "threat," earlier "fear," Middle Irish bocanách "supernatural being"). Some speculate that these words are from a root meaning "goat" (see buck (n.1)) and represent originally a goat-like spectre. Compare also bogey (n.1) and Puck. Middle English Compendium compares Low German bögge, böggel-mann "goblin." Perhaps influenced in meaning by Old English -budda used in compounds for "beetle" (compare Low German budde "louse, grub," Middle Low German buddech "thick, swollen").

The name of bug is given in a secondary sense to insects considered as an object of disgust and horror, and in modern English is appropriated to the noisome inhabitants of our beds, but in America is used as the general appellation of the beetle tribe .... A similar application of the word signifying an object dread to creeping things is very common. [Hensleigh Wedgwood, "A Dictionary of English Etymology," 1859]

Meaning "defect in a machine" (1889) may have been coined c. 1878 by Thomas Edison (perhaps with the notion of an insect getting into the works). Meaning "person obsessed by an idea" (as in firebug "arsonist") is from 1841, perhaps from notion of persistence. Sense of "microbe, germ" is from 1919. Bugs "crazy" is from c. 1900. Bug juice as a slang name for drink is from 1869, originally "bad whiskey." The 1811 slang dictionary has bug-hunter "an upholsterer." Bug-word "word or words meant to irritate and vex" is from 1560s.

bug (v.1)

"to bulge, protrude," 1872, originally of eyes, perhaps from a humorous or dialect mispronunciation of bulge (v.). Related: Bugged; bugging. As an adjective, bug-eyed recorded from 1872; so commonly used of space creatures in mid-20c. science fiction that the initialism (acronym) BEM for bug-eyed monster was current by 1953.

 

bug (v.2)

"to annoy, irritate," 1949, perhaps first in swing music slang, probably from bug (n.) and a reference to insect pests. Related: Bugged; bugging.

bug (v.3)

"to scram, skedaddle," 1953, of uncertain origin, perhaps related to bug (v.2), and compare bug off. Bug out (n.) "precipitous retreat" (1951) is from the Korean War.

bug (v.4)

"equip with a concealed microphone," 1949, earlier "equip with an alarm system," 1919, underworld slang, probably a reference to bug (n.1). Bug (n.) "concealed microphone" is from 1946. Related: Bugged; bugging.

 

Entries linking to bug

bulge (v.)

"to protrude, swell out," 1670s, from bulge (n.). Related: Bulged; bulging.

bugbear (n.)

"something that causes terror," especially needless terror, 1580s, a sort of demon in the form of a bear that eats small children, also "object of dread" (whether real or not), from obsolete bug "goblin, scarecrow" (see bug (n.)) + bear (n.).

bugaboo

buck

bogey

puck

firebug

bug off

bedbug

boggart

boggle

bug-bite

buggy

bughouse

debug

doodle-bug

jitterbug

june-bug

ladybug

litterbug

See all related words (23) >

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Definitions of bug

1

bug (n.)

general term for any insect or similar creeping or crawling invertebrate;

bug (n.)

a fault or defect in a computer program, system, or machine;

Synonyms: glitch

bug (n.)

a small hidden microphone; for listening secretly;

bug (n.)

insects with sucking mouthparts and forewings thickened and leathery at the base; usually show incomplete metamorphosis;

Synonyms: hemipterous insect / hemipteran / hemipteron

bug (n.)

a minute life form (especially a disease-causing bacterium); the term is not in technical use;

Synonyms: microbe / germ

2

bug (v.)

annoy persistently;

Synonyms: tease / badger / pester / beleaguer

bug (v.)

tap a telephone or telegraph wire to get information;

Is this hotel room bugged?

Synonyms: wiretap / tap / intercept