ghost stories, bees and one pigeon

i'm not wearing a seat belt too often lately. i'm not sure what this says about my sense of mortality, lack thereof or sense of driving ability, but i've heard again from an on again, off again driver, a story that i've heard earlier, that the driver is in the most vulnerable positionin the bus, not merely because he sits in the very front, but in the way that the bus is designed, the structural i beams don't begin until the passenger compartment, the drivers position is simply an empty module designed so that it can be replaced easily, but there is no support for it. which means as in the case of the one fatality that this company has had, the drivers compartment crumples if you rear end something. manny was the drivers name and he dozed off and rear ended a semi or dumptruck or something big depending upon who you ask. the story seems to geta little larger with every telling like a good ghost story will. manny was supposed to be a nice guy, but he fell asleep and bingo. no seat belt will help there. alan, the on again, off again driver said that he doesn't wear his so that if he knew that he couldn't avoid something, he could leap out of the seat and get farther back in the bus. when its going to happen, i guess there is nothing further that you can do, so the hell with the captain going down with the ship. manny's bus was rebuilt like a frankenstein monster and exists today. drivers say that they talk to manny sometimes and always say hello when they get on board. i have yet to drive manny's bus, but i will surely say hey to him.
yesterday two odd things happened to me. i had slept the night in utica and was getting the bus ready at the motel for the morning run. sitting in the drivers seat i noticed a little yellowjacket buzzing against the outside of the window merrily or pissed off, its hard to tell with bees. why are you trying to get in here little yellowjacket? i told him, stay outside. he buzzed and thumped against the window. i continued with my pre-trip, the bus idling happily and walked around to check the turn signals, tires, potential trouble that could turn the bus into one of manny's companions, and then i heard a loud buzzing and something flew past my head. i looked up and there, swarming the bus were hundreds of yellowjackets, all doing the same cryptic dance around the outside of the bus, except that they were all concentrated in one particular locale, along the the entire length of just one side of the bus (my side...) against the lower half of the windows and weatherstripping. what this means in terms of an omen, i haven't a clue. maybe they were trying to go somewhere, but i wasn't taking any passengers then.
i ran over a pigeon yesterday too. not in manhattan, but along route 28 near mount tremper. almost in the middle of the woods, far from too much civilisation, far from sidewalks, people throwing them bread in a park, far from where a pigeon should be. i saw him, fat and grey and walking in the middle of the road. i began slowing down for my turn. i'm not one to take any cruel joy in running anything over. i go out of my way to avoid squirrels, chipmunks, snakes, toads, etc... but i thought, this is no dodo, this pigeon has wings, he'll see me and fly away. he bobbed his head and walked more in his stupid little pigeon strut and strutted more into my path, directly along the line that my right tires were going to take. i could hear him, coo coo, coo coo and walking, jerking his head, out for a walk. and then i was on him. he'll surely fly now... but he didn't. i looked behind the bus even as i felt the gentle thump and saw a great cloud of feathers billow into the breeze behind the bus. natural selection, evolution at work, i guess. maybe he was just a transplant here from the city like so many others in that neighborhood of my home. not sure where he was, wild instincts blunted by the city life and came here expecting it to be safer than the concrete of home. i'll just go for a walk today.