Swarms of bees, everywhere. You're walking along and suddenly you hear this low, humming sound. You look up and there it is -- a buzzing, pulsating swarm as big as a football, hanging from a limb a couple of feet above your head.

Bao is appalled. He looks at them and he looks at me and shakes his head as if to say, What have you done now?

As far as Bao is concerned, I'm omnipotent. The sun rises and sets at my command. Little kids think Mom and Dad are all-powerful, but then they grow up and that's the end of that. Dogs never grow up.

So the bees are my fault, too. Seriously, I do worry about them. You can psyche out a coyote or a bobcat, but you can't reason with an angry bee, although I've read they're less dangerous when they're swarming than when they're defending their hive. I particularly worry about the Africanized honey bees, which migrated into Arizona from Mexico a decade ago. These little guys take no prisoners. We need bees, I know that. But do we need killer bees?