Because kind of like that I seem to always, always be coming up with the perfect LJ Idol entry the moment it's too late. In this case, with "step on a crack," after thinking about it all weekend I didn't even have the beginning of an idea. And then, just now, I saw the poll go up, then got in the shower, and then the idea struck me:
Bees will seal any crack less than a quarter inch wide with tree resin (propolis) since its too narrow for them and they like a nice cozy home. In Africa a great deal of what I was teaching was the correct use of "bee space" in locally made beehives -- they were often too wide or too narrow, leading to cross combing, double combing, bees building across what's meant to be a bee "hallway" or walking right through cracks that shouldn't be there. And meanwhile, as I like to work the prompts in in multiple senses, I could talk about the cracked mud underfoot, and the cracks in society evidenced from arriving at bee yards where fulani herdsmen had just raided the local hives, and were chased away by beekeepers angrily throwing stones, or the Boko Haram terrorist group which always made us all a little jumpy, blowing things up sometimes in the next town over.
::sigh::
