On a sizzling July afternoon, I scooped a drowning bumblebee from a water bucket I'd carelessly abandoned near the garden.

I plopped the bee in sunlight on an old fir stump. The bee was moving, but drunkenly, wiping a leg over plastered wings, as if to squeegee them.

I hoped it might sit still in the sun until the wings dried, but it jerked and "limped" across the face of the stump, attracting attention from a red ant that emerged from a cavity in the wood. The ant attacked the bee, and a second ant -- seeming conjured out of thin air -- joined the fray.

Committed to saving the bee, but fearful of damaging its gossamer wings, I gingerly attempted to brush the ants away. Unfortunately, my slight pressure on the rotting stump crushed the surface veneer, and dozens of ants burst forth in a skittering mass.

They swarmed the bee and began to whisk it away as if on the crest of a wave. I was alarmed at how swiftly it happened, and although the bee was to an ant as a whale is to a human, in a second the victim was about to vanish into the bowels of the hollowed stump amid the scrum of attackers.

I was holding my fire department radio, and I picked at the bee with the antenna, flinging it into a jungle of tall grass next to the stump. It was free of the mob, but two or three ants had also landed nearby, and seemed to be stalking their lost prey.

I hoped the bee would latch onto the tip of the antenna so I could lift it free, but it clung tenaciously to a stalk of grass.

The ants homed in, so I plucked the stem, and cupping the bee in my palm, I strode a few yards across the lawn and laid it on our picnic table. An ant crawled on my wrist and I flicked it away.

The bee lurched across the tabletop, paused a moment at the edge, then abruptly tumbled off to the lawn, its wings buzzing for the first time. I watched to see if it would launch, but it could only crawl-and-fall its way across the grass, struggling through the blade tops, wings humming ineffectually.

I feared the wings would be torn, so again I plucked a stalk and bee together, and returned them to the middle of the tabletop. Less awkwardly, it worked toward the edge.

About 12 minutes had passed since I raised it from the water, and I felt like the stunt director of a frenetically paced "Indiana Jones" movie for bugs. At the table's end the bee lurched over the rim again, but dropped only inches before it braked into a hover, then soared away, climbing up and up to the northwest.

It was more than 30 feet high when I lost it amid the canopy of a birch.

I was struck by how its flight path mimicked that of another creature from two weeks before. I was stationed in the log pavilion at McCarthy Beach State Park, sitting among a small crowd of people awaiting the performance of a local singer/storyteller, when a small bird rocketed past the open double doors and body-slammed a window on the opposite side of the room.

It dropped to the floor, and a collective "Ohhhh ..." rose from the audience.

But in a moment the bird shot back up, drumming its wings against the glass. "It's a hummingbird!" puffed a female voice.

I approached the window intending to shoo the hummer outdoors, but it was determined to wildly beat against the glass, so I gently cupped my hands at its wingtips, forming a loose, half-open cage with my fingers. It felt like cradling a morsel of wind.

I turned for the doorway, presenting the bird to the light, and took three or four steps. My hands were suddenly empty, and the crowd spontaneously applauded as the hummingbird buzzed out the door and zoomed steeply for the pine tops, like a jet blasting off the end of a runway.

For a fleeting instant, with the sensation of wingtips still tickling my palms, I vicariously shared the triumph of flight.

• • •

From a global perspective, these rescues were tiny acts of conservation, on a par, perhaps, with replacing an incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent, or recycling a newspaper instead of flinging it in the trash.

I don't believe there's a grand ledger kept somewhere in which these two deeds are balanced against my sins. I do entertain a fantasy that the bee and the hummingbird told their colleagues, and a few days later, while gathering nectar and gossiping, pointed me out: That's him!

Not likely, but as we learned long ago in Aesop's Fables, "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." I like to believe that, and you probably do, too, but why?

Because we may gain some advantage or reward? Because tit-for-tat, those we help will return the favor?

Maybe, if our kindness is directed toward other humans and we exercise some mutual altruism. However, if that is your motive for good deeds, you are probably on shaky ground -- and doubly so if your kindness is directed toward wild animals.

Even homo sapiens has been known to bite the hand that feeds or rescues. So why rush to the aid of the bee and the bird?

Because most of the time, most of us can't help it. Life leans toward life; interspecies rescue missions materialize as naturally as a cloud of moths to a porch light. The environmental movement may be considered an organized form of the phenomenon.

Noted biologist and writer E.O. Wilson coined the term "biophilia," which he defined as "the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes," and emphasized that "to the degree that we come to understand other organisms, we will place greater value on them, and on ourselves."

It's probably a genetic trait. We originated in the biosphere, and we live in it. For example, most people have some level of wariness or fear of snakes and spiders, even after little or no negative contact with the creatures, and full-blown phobias are easily acquired.

Yet, the same person who may awake, trembling, from a nightmare about a python squirming under her bed in a Minneapolis apartment feels no particular innate dread toward the more likely modern threats of automobiles, electricity or polysaturated fats.

Similarly, a majority of humans prefer to gaze at water, greenery and flowers rather than at concrete, steel and asphalt. It's likely no accident that our urban parks are reminiscent of African savannah -- trees in grassland with some "water feature" -- where it's probable our ancestors originated.

The development of language and myth is highly dependent upon the employment of natural symbols, particularly animals. They are kin.

Though we are as tightly bound to nature as any bacterium, we don't fully understand the intricate network of life. It's a potent argument for conservation and preservation, since we aren't sure which nodes of the web are the most crucial to our own survival.

Thus the universe remains mysterious, and that is the core of its spiritual dimension -- if by "spiritual" we mean the sense that there is a force, or template, or meaning greater than ourselves.

So we reach out warmly to life -- to other people, to animals and even to plants, sometimes investing deep emotional capital into flowers and trees. The epithet "tree hugger" is genetically apropos.

Our biophilia -- "life-love" -- is one of the most credible ways of approaching meaning, transcendence and survival.

As we contemplate the damage we've done and continue to do to the biosphere, and how we might change our ways and mitigate our impacts, we must know that love is the answer.

Peter M. Leschak is the author of "Ghosts of the Fireground," "Letters from Side Lake" and other books. He lives in Side Lake, Minn.