One cloudy afternoon, a seven-year-old girl went for a walk. She crossed a large area of grassland into the woods before she realized that she was lost.

The woods are remnants(残余) of a huge forest which once covered the whole area, which were designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Sitting on a rock and wondering what to do, she began crying. A slight breeze was stirring the branches. The flowers were gently swaying in the breeze. It is quiet around her and she listened to the nice chirping(鸣叫) of insects, which is waving and faint, just like a Buddhist melody. After a while, she decided to walk along a wide path lined with tall trees and thick bushes.

When it was getting dark, she saw a small, dark wooden house. Above the cottage the fir-trees gently swayed and rustled in the breeze.

She opened the door and cautiously stepped in. Suddenly, she heard a strange noise, and she ran out the door and back to the woods . She was seized with panic.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any farther. Cold and tired, she fell asleep near a stream.

The girl’s parents were out and her dog, Laddy, was at home. Laddy sensed that his mistress was in danger. He jumped through a window, breaking the glass. He looked in the fields, but he couldn't find his mistress anywhere.

It was a Monday and Khan, a pet dog had joined the family the previous Friday. He had already decided that two-year-old Charlotte was-his No.1 girl. The dog had seldom left her side since arriving at his new home.

Khan was next to Charlotte when Catherine took her into the garden for some fresh air. “I was just in the house doing boring mother things and Charlotte wanted to go outside and run around,” she says. “We were just walking around the garden looking at flowers and all that good stuff. Khan was with her.”

Charlotte was soon tired of playing in the garden and then went to play the padlock on the gate. “She was beating the padlock and it was banging on the gate,” Catherine recalls. She thought Khan, who was naturally right next to Charlotte, might be disturbed by the loud noise, but he seemed undisturbed by it. That was until, entirely without warning, he became very upset indeed.

“Khan suddenly started making this noise from the depths of his chest, this growl,” she says. “His whole chest puffed up, his hair stood up, and he lowered his head. He continued to make this growl.”

As Catherine watched, Khan seemed to double in size. “He kept trying to push her. I was right next to Charlotte—no more than a metre away and I thought, ‘He’s going to hurt her’. His chest was bigger than he was long,” she says.

Time seemed to slow down as Catherine rushed desperately to save her daughter. But Khan got to Charlotte first. He grabbed her by the back of her clothes and threw her over his shoulder into the garden. “I turned and looked and she was just sitting there in a pile of grass.” Still not certain whether Khan’s strange behaviour was some sort of attack on her child, Catherine raced to pick up Charlotte, who was completely unharmed, and take her inside to safety. Just as she turned to run into the house, Catherine saw a big brown snake bite Khan right in the chest and slid away quickly.

Khan screamed in pain and at the same moment, Catherine understood all.

Khan needed immediate medical help, so Catherine called a vet (兽医) in no time.       

Where are the bees?

Bees are essential to the production of food we eat. Bees make honey, but they also pollinate large areas of crops, such as straw berries, apples and onions. About a third of the food we eat is a result of pollination of the bees. Unfortunately, bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate.

In 2006, bee keepers started reporting about something called Colony Collapse Disaster (CCD).The main sign of CCD is the loss of adult honey bees from a hive. In October of 2006, some beekeepers reported that they had lost between 30 and 90 percent of their hives.

There were many theories for the disappearance of the bees. But the most convincing one has to do with pesticides and lifestyles of bees today. Nowadays, beekeeper get most of their income not from producing honey but from renting bees to pollinate plants. This means that the life of the typical bee now consists of travelling all around the country to pollinate crops as the seasons change. That means a lot of traveling on trucks, which is very stressful to bees. It is not unusual for up to 30% of the hive to die during transport due to stress. In addition, bees that spend most of their time locked up on trucks are not exposed to what they usually live on. Instead, they live on a sweet liquid from corn, usually polluted with pesticides.

The exact reason for the disappearance of bees is not sure, but losing bees is very costly to the economy. The bee pollination services are worth over $8 billion a year. With no bees, pollination will have to be done by hand, which would have effects on the quality of food and increased food priced. We hear a lot about big environmental disasters almost every day. But one of the biggest may just be the less of that tiny flying insect.