Honey is what??

Sometimes, I see something and I find it so thought-provoking and surprising, that I get all fidgety and anxious about who I can tell. Then, I remember. The blog! I can tell the blog.

Blog, listen to this: "Honey is bee vomit too."

I know this not only because someone scrawled the message across a sign outside of the arboretum, but because, after seeing the sign above, I did some serious, hard-nosed research. I pulled up my Google task bar and entered, "honey bee vomit."

Turns out, honey is regurgitated by bees after they consume nectar. If you really want to know (and you do, don't you?), bees consume nectar, and then the nectar hangs out in their "honey stomach," which is different from their other stomach. We're supposed to be comforted by that. Also, once the nectar is turned into honey by the enzymes in the honey-stomach, the bee voluntarily regurgitates it. And we're supposed to take comfort in that too--that the regurgitating is voluntary, which somehow distances it from the involuntary vomit that is totally gross.

Why did someone go to the trouble of writing this message on the "Pets Prohibited" sign? To point out how often something lovely (honey) is linked to something profane (puke!)? To remind us that, in life, the lovely and the ugly are interconnected and mixed together, and you can't have one without the other? Want beautiful flowers or big, tasty vegetables? You'll need some crap to make them grow. Want honey for your tea? Well, some bee is going to have to put its finger down its throat to pull some back up for you. Want love? Well, you're going to have to put up with some crap, too. (And this is supposed to be comforting: the crap we encounter and work through is part of the nature of the thing, and it might--if you follow the metaphor far enough--actually prove nourishing.)

Nourishing like bee vomit. Or manure.

Basely yours,
Kendall

PS: Obviously, the person who tagged the sign was protesting the park's apparent objection to dog poop. I'm pretty sure the arboretum was more concerned with maintaining its trails and keeping animals from wrecking their exotic, delicate plants. Still, I'm happy that person took sharpie to sign. I can't tell you how often in the past few days I've thought to myself, "Honey is bee vomit, too." Try it. See if you don't feel comforted.