One summer when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I obsessively collected bees. My favorites were bumblebees – fat, fuzzy, and all around adorable. I kept them in glass canning jars – one bee per jar – that had been filled with red clover and had air holes punched through the lids. I loved looking at them, watching them suck nectar from the clover, and buzzing around the jar. Sometimes I had pangs of conscience, watching them in their little glass prisons, and always let them go after a day or two of captivity. There were some casualties along the way for which I felt guilty, but my fascination with them was too strong to give up the collecting.
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