Finneran: Of The Birds And The Bees

Friday, April 29, 2016

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Poets and philosophers tell us that “in the Spring a young man’s fancy turns to love."

I’m here to tell you that it’s not just young men. Those legendary birds and bees are thinking of love as well.

That poor little guy in the picture---that brilliant showy red-plumed male cardinal---is singing his heart out to his flirtatious claret-hued lover.

She’s all over the place, flitting here and there through the woods while he sits forlornly at the top of still bare trees, pining away like a scorned Valentino. The poor guy. No lovestruck teenager has ever struggled so mightily to get his girl to pay attention.

All day long he sings---from pre-dawn darkness to and through the dusk of day. And all day long she flirts, occasionally doing the bird version of showing some leg to a potential lover, but usually remaining just beyond his sight. She’s a tease.

So he, like some head-over-heels Romeo does his imitation of Pavarotti or Caruso, hoping to charm her and hoping to really ruffle her feathers.

Listen closely when you go out tomorrow morning. City dweller or farmhand or suburbanite, all will hear our lonely young man. He certainly puts some time and effort into winning her heart. And good for her for maintaining a sense of decency. No casual hookups for her! She apparently has high standards.

In the end his hard work seems to pay off for the species seems to flourish everywhere. So sing on my feathered friend, sing on.................

Now compare the lonely frustrated but determined cardinal, that dedicated and devoted lover in waiting, to the layabout males in the hives of honeybees.

These guys—known as drones—are the worst. They are like every unemployed and unemployable teenager you’ve ever known. They do no work at all. None whatsoever. They gather no nectar. They gather no pollen. They do not clean the hive or mold the wax into cells. Yet they consume prodigious quantities of food without ever having lifted a finger. And they are preoccupied with sex. Sounds just like every teenage guy I ever knew.................lying on the couch, burping, passing gas, eating food, and chasing young ladies with unusual vigor. They’re really not marriage material.

There is however a fatal comeuppance in store for these guys. Their only legitimate role is in maintaining a good genetic mix in honeybee populations. Thus when a drone is stirred to action, he leaves the hive and hangs out at the local “drone corner” along with all the other horned up drones. Unmated queens then drop by, mating with several different males, gaining genetic diversity, and returning to their humble hives, blissfully prepared to be real queens, laying as many as a thousand eggs a day! Now that’s a queen!

As for the drones, they’re a little bit like Nelson Rockefeller, long rumored to have died in the arms of his lover in the Governor’s Mansion in New York. Rocky’s death has become a New York legend with the typical Empire State twist where the tease was that “he died with his boots off”. I guess you could call the entire tawdry episode taking “executive action”.

As for the drone bees, having done their sacred duty mating with a queen, they fall to the ground and die. Research has yet to show whether or not they die with smiles etched on their faces..............

Such are the lives of the birds and the bees. Happy Spring!

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.