Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for August 09, 2010

Seeing is believing, Calvin…

I saw it. So there!

(Perception is the mother of all fears)

Sometimes seeing is believing, and others it is believing is seeing.

Fraught with peril, you say it!

It’s all in the eyes of the beholder……… ………………………or something like that!

G’Morning, Marg, Mike, Grog & Fran!

Calvin isn’t alone today. Ruthie is dealing with a bee, too.

…..and it’s stinger was like a harpoon…..

Was Calvin watching “Whale Wars” again???

I t’ot I taw a puddy tat … Or was that Hobbes ???

So ‘bee’ it. I choose to pass sarcastic comments rather than believe you, Calvin.

Exaggerating just a little are we Calvin.

“Let It Be” - The Beatles “Be My Little Baby Bumblebee! - Teresa Brewer “To be or not to be, that is the question” - from Hamlet “It must’ve weighed 70 pounds!” Don’t ‘bee’lieve it, Hobbes! “And Can It Be?”

Marg, wasn’t that “Seeing is beelieving.”

Puddleglum, further to your erudition on the English language may I suggest an excellent book? - Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: english and how it got that way.

Also recommended for any others interested in English - informative but anything but stuffy.

i can not beeelive that there can beee such a beeeg (big) bee

To bee or not to bee; that is the question…

(well, SOMEONE had to trot out that old joke…)

Classic Hobbes (his comment in panel 4).

It’s been a couple years but still fresh in my memory. One day while playing in the house my granddaughter came running down the hallway all excited saying, “Bird grandma!” She was still learning the names of things and would get all excited if she something she liked outside the window or on television. She was also scared of every dark corner so we’d leave a light on in all the rooms to eleviate her fears. I was sitting on the couch catching my breath after chasing her around playing. She soon said and pointed towards our bedroom, “Grandma bird!” She was even more excited this time. As the words were coming out of my mouth, “Silly girl birds aren’t in the house they’re outside.”, I saw it. Sure enough there it was flying in the bedroom. My husband was in the garage doing guy stuff and so I called him. He thought I had flipped out but came in shortly. By that time it was swooping through the house and we were freaking out. To tie things up, it was a bat, which led to another by breakfast the next morning!

Suburban Outback? lol

Why do we find it so humorous when the other guy steps on a yellow jacket nest, runs his hedge trimmer into a paper wasp nest or walks into a bee hive. We’re sick, but we have a good time. Buzz!

Our cat brought a bat into the house, and the (*&^ thing roosted upside down in our Christmas tree. My wife beat it to death (I thought) but when I picked it up to throw it out, it bit me. One trip to ER, about a million shots, starting with the finger that got bit, and up the arms and down the legs, starting at the belt line and ending at the ankles. The good news, I don’t have to worry about rabies for about ten more years.

I can bee-lieve it.

Good Morning, Marg, Mike & ♠Lonewolf♠

I guess Calvin’s lucky he didn’t get stung. Maybe the bee is still out there – hunting.

Perception is Reality

I love the reference ‘as big as a kaiser roll’ , how many people would use a kaiser roll for size reference? Bill must have been hunger at the time.. Have a Great Day Everyone..

ALL bees look like that to me

wonder if it was a humming bird????

It was probably Calvin who sicked the bee on Ruthie. He doesn’t like girls after all…

Hey- I see ‘em all the time!

Puddleglum2 It looks as if a few folks here have had the same thought as I did a few weeks ago about your comments and how sometimes they Zapp the fun out of the comic strips. Do you remember? ” Short and Pithy” However ,I have found myself still reading them and have never flagged you. I only flag the spam and vulger comments. I would not flag someone for just expressing there opinion. After all what good are places like this if you can’t opine? I wouldn’t say your out. Mabey a double. At the very least a base hit. ……….That last bit is just a little humor : {)

TN-REDD, The average weight of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird is one-eighth of an ounce. Calvin claims that his ‘bee’ “must’ve weighed 70 pounds”. How can it ‘bee’? Calvin’s words ‘bee’lie (calumniate) the actuality, even if it really is a bee. He must be bloviating again. It appears that Calvin has a serious pho’bee’a!

rshive said, “Maybe the bee is still out there - hunting.” If so, may’bee’ it’s because Calvin has ‘ring around the collar’ (necktar). Bees seek (hunt) nectar regularly.

Yukoner - I have that book, and read it. I thought it was quite interesting and informative.

All bee’s are big and scary!

luv the first panel drawing

Yukoner, Thank you for the suggestion about The Mother Tongue. I have been checking various websites. I might not buy the book, but I have already read excerpts from the book, and some reviews of the book as well. Is the swearing section explicit? That would sully the enjoyment for me. Since I have discovered many excerpts in different places, that might be sufficient. I suppose all languages have their idiosyncrasies, foibles, and oddities of one kind or another. English is no exception.

“Sounded like a helicopter and it’s stinger was like a harpoon” Have you ever heard a humming bird?They do sound like that. As to the stinger, it would be at the wrong end. Bee’s sting from the rear and of course humming birds have the whole harpoon thing going for them in the front.. Or just mabey Calvin is speaking with a forked tounge……Childhood imagination is great fun. Even better when it is carried into the adult side of life..!

I love Hobbes reaction in the last panel to Calvin’s agitated state. He calmly interlaces his fingers and crosses his legs so as to say “ho hum, no excitement here”.

Destiny23, sorry, I just don’t get your comments. Sicked, who isn’t feeling well? Ruthie?

Yukoner, I agree that Bill Bryson is wonderful.

I do enjoy reading the one and two line comments by most posters on here. Some I always skip, like Dino-1 who does a boring ramble on about her granddaughter.

Puddleglum2, I usually enjoy your first two comments but don’t read more than two by anyone.

Now that I have broken all my own rules … Bye.

“There is something infinitly healing about the repeated refrains of nature”…Rachel Carson

fran650, At least you’re not discriminating against me, but if I enjoy someone’s comments, I welcome reading more of them. Woodeye used to say that he would read only four of my comments for one day. Apparently, you two have a saturation point, but thank you for usually enjoying my first two comments. However, since I’ve written more than two comments already today, maybe you won’t read this one, unless you continue breaking all your own rules … Bye.

Killer death bees are bad enough…but BATS are the scariest bugs ever!

TN-REDD, Is Rachel Carson implying that it’s a good idea to “let nature take its course”!

they all look like that to me too, Calvin. ;-)

LUV HOBBES look- AS IN Calvin, Take this worried look off my Face::-)) Back when in Forestry college ,we had the OUTDOORS CLUB. ONE Thing we did was spelunking (caving) One trip we slept in this one cave that was a bat house by day. When I woke up in the morning, 5ft above me was about 100 or so bats and my sleeping bag was covered with bat do do. they don’t bother us as we progress on further inside, as they were waiting for nite time to leave and do their feeding. Humans not their forte

Don’t make me a sandwich on a 70 pound Kaiser roll. Too filling

hey calvin, better a seeing a bee than falling butt first into a nest of fire ants like my friends husband did a few years ago

In this heat I rarely get outside at the right time, but last week I took a walk at twilight and saw something I didn’t remotely realize we had in this part of Houston: bats, winging around catching what I hope included lots of mosquitos.

Bats? In the middle of the 610 Loop? Whodathunkit? I hadn’t seen the little guys since I lived in Tucson, so far as I can recall at the moment.

How about running head first into a paper wasp nest? At about seven years old?

Lewreader, in laughing at others’ perils we laugh at our own fears.

Not that this is necessarily a good thing…

@N7326foxtrot, I read your post and was sorry to learn that the bat was so abused.

I get them in my house a lot because we live way out in the country. They are more afraid of you than you are of them. We just let them fly around until the find a place to land and then use heavy gloves to easily pick them up and turn them loose outside.

They do a great job of eating mosquitos and other flying insects that are really far more annoying than the bats.

I just can’t imagine anyone trying to beat a bat to death…Gross. And by the time you picked it up it was in pain and dying so it is no wonder it bit you.

Yes, I know about the rabies threat. If it is acting irrationally it is probably infected but I have never run into one in 40 years in my “way out yonder” location.

By the way, a lot of people put out “bat houses” just like bird houses except they are engineered to encourage bats to nest because they are so environmentally friendly and perform a useful service.

bee?

I was backing up to a trailer with an employee guiding me when he stepped on a yellow jacket nest in the ground. He was running around like the proverbial chicken, so I did the noble thing; I rolled up the windows on my truck until things were clear. Of course I locked the doors so he wouldn’t ‘invite’ any of them into the truck should he seek refuge there. All turned out well, and we had a good laugh about it later.

thebird55 said, ”How about running head first into a paper wasp nest? At about seven years old?”

Ah, yes, growing pains. ~My friend and I were racing through the woods at about that age when he ran headlong into a hanging bees nest. But to make matters worse, his rescuing mom began wildly beating the swarming bees off his screaming head with a wooden spoon which ended up doing more damage than the bees did.

Puddleglum2 Yes. She would of liked nature the way it is in the town that Calvin and Hobbes lives in. Back a few days ago C&H were just laid back on a tree doing “nothing” . In Nature. Also the boys are in the woods in today script. Although being chased by a humming bee(or so Calvin says)may not of been her favorite thing to do. She would still love it !! Being Nature and all.

Calvin’s experience reminds me of the Woody Allen movie in which he does battle in a bathroom with a “bug the size of a Buick” holding a tennis racket in his hand to defend himself….

Calvin, don’t worry. It’s only a few more weeks until Mrs. Wormwood and SCHOOL!

@Grazer, I agree: bats really are the big bug scourge of the skies. And even worse inside the house.

flong2934 thank you for saying what was on my mind. I was disturbed by the beating the bat to death comment, too. They’re helpful little critters.

@grazer,

I only got stung twice. Once on the upper lip and once one the right elbow. Of course, I hollered. When a neighbor came out to see what the problem was he got stung over twenty times.

Took my son at about age 4 to visit my parents. It was, ironically, Halloween.

They had bought an 150 yr old house in the Shenandoah Valley and were restoring it. The house came with electricity, no running water and all kinds of outside critters living inside.

By the time we got there they had already gotten the house annexed into town, hooked up to town sewer & water and had added 2 bathrooms.

Most of the critters had been banished to live with the feral chickens outside.

Now my mom always kept a loaded shotgun in the 4th floor bathroom. (The house was built into a ledge and that window looked down on the garden and a thriving ground hog population.)

Mom was scared to have the gun accessible to my son, so she pulled away the heavy metal plate they used to keep my sister’s Siamese cat out of one of the unused hearths. Mom stood the gun up inside the fireplace and resealed the opening, but not before a group of bats flew into the kitchen.

We spent most of Halloween with bats kiting through the house, a howling Siamese, and the wind rattling the tin roof.

In the morning, we managed to chip enough paint off one of the window to get it open, allowing the bats to escape.

Exorcising the king snakes from the cellar is a tail for another day.

^ Hahaha!–How perfect! ^

I have to agree with Hobbes.

Lewreader: To quote Mel Brooks as the Ten Thousand Year Old Man:

“Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole. Tragedy is when I stub my toe.”

A little bee and a few friends can put the run on beast or man you did the right thing little buddy . Run.

I wonder if Calvin had experience with bees before. some people have an allergic reaction which can be very serious, so caution is a good thing. I enjoy everyone’s comments till I realize how much time I’ve spent here instead of doing laundry, cleaning house, etc. Hey, that’s a good thing!

A KAISER ROLL??!