It was Saturday night, not Thursday, so David was having dinner with Mom and me. He wanted to know how my first day in the blue walking boot was.
“Busy!” I said. “I solved a mystery!”
Mom wasn’t exactly glad to hear there were bees living in our front door.
“Do they sting?” Mom asked.
“Mr. Vaslov said most of them don’t. Carpenter bees are not the same as bumblebees.”
“Do they look alike?” David asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“We should learn more,” David said after dinner. “Let’s look them up.”
He turned on Mom’s laptop, and we did a search on the internet until we found some pictures.
“Carpenter bees aren’t fuzzy like bumblebees,” David said. “Their bodies are black and shiny.”
Knowing the difference between carpenter bees and other bees was important. Except it didn’t solve the problem at Starwood Park.
“How do we make them want to live somewhere else?” I asked David.
David started typing. “Let’s find out!”
The first website we found said we should use poison.
“That’s not safe for the bees or us,” I told David.
“Tienes razón,” David said.
I was glad to hear David agreeing with me. I just didn’t expect him to say it in Spanish.
“¿Hablas español?” I asked.
“I’m taking a class,” David explained, “to surprise your mom.”
So that’s where he went on Thursday nights. If David was learning Spanish for my mom, he must really like her. Did that mean I might be getting a dad one day?
“Mom thinks it’s good to know more than one language,” I said.
“Sí,” David said. “She’s right!”
We smiled at each other before going back to our internet search.
“Look!” I said. “There’s a safer way to make carpenter bees go away.”
I couldn’t wait to tell Mr. Vaslov and Amy.
In the morning, I went to the toolshed with a spray bottle that smelled like lemons. I explained how it worked.
“This isn’t poison. It won’t hurt the bees. They just don’t like the smell of citrus fruit.”
“Brilliant!” Mr. Vaslov said. “They will leave on their own before I fill the holes and paint.”
I felt full of brain power. I’d figured out how to save the bees and Starwood Park. So I was only a little sad when Mr. Vaslov called Amy for a job that needed super speed.
“Can you run around the buildings and spray every hole you see?”
“Absolutely!” Amy said.
While Amy was gone, Mr. Vaslov and I worked on my goggle tracker. We talked about the new sound I wanted in place of the barking dog.
“Is that all you want to change?” Mr. Vaslov asked.
I decided it would also be good for the button to have a flashing arrow that pointed in the direction of my goggles.
“This way, I can know which way to go,” I told Mr. Vaslov.
“Inventive thinking!” Mr. Vaslov approved. “And we have the equipment and the software to program this change.”
Amy came back to the toolshed just as we were going outside for a test. She wanted to help.
“Can you drop my goggles behind one of the buildings?” I asked.
“Sure!”
Now we were ready. I pressed the new button on my wristband. We followed the arrow down the sidewalk and behind Building C, until we heard my goggles.
BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!
Mr. Vaslov winked at me. “A bee sound is much better than a bark.”
Amy was waiting for us, standing beside my goggles. My invention worked perfectly.
“Wow!” Amy said. “Can you make a tracker for me? My sunglasses are lost. They fell off while I was running.”
Mr. Vaslov patted my back. “What do you think, Freddie?”
I was glad I had invented something both Amy and I needed. We were going to make a good team.
