Summary

Part 1, September, cont’d – Beekeeping. The author contemplates how most relationships between human beings and the animals they take care of (including birds and insects) involves at least some degree of awareness of, and interaction between, the respective worlds of the two participants. He points out that the relationship between humans and bees is very different – bees, he says, have no real sense of the world of the human beings that are “keeping” them. “The problem for the beekeeper,” he says, “is that nothing can be offered to the bees that they are unable to procure for themselves” (52). He adds that this is the reason why beekeepers behave they way they do around beehives, “in that slow peculiar dance which shows human beings at their most subservient and perhaps also at their most beautiful” (52).

Blood – The author contemplates how blood, unlike most of the...