The biggest problem with Donald Duck, I feel—and I’m speaking about his personality, here—is that he can’t accept that others, too, have the right to their simple pleasures. He tromps through life completely unaware that others are just as real as he is, which is I suppose a prime indicator that, yes, he’s a sociopath. It’s kind of awful how many of his cartoons can be summarized as “Donald sees another character having a good time, is angry about it, and makes them miserable. Then, he laughs until they get revenge.”

In this case, Donald is taking a trip to the beach. As is just about everyone else; while no one else seems to be in the water, the sand is nothing but beach umbrellas as far as the eye can see. Spike the Bee is also taking a nice little trip to the beach. He pries open a clam as his beach chair, settles a flower as his umbrella, and is relaxing peacefully until Donald steps on him, shakes sand onto him, and so forth. At first, he just doesn’t notice; soon after, he’s deliberately antagonizing him and laughing. Then Donald goes out into the water in a small inflatable raft, and that’s somewhere a bee has some distinct advantages over a . . . well, anthropomorphized duck, let’s be real, but yeah.

On the one hand, ducks can swim. Better than humans. And I feel as though Disney knows we’re thinking this, which is why the sharks come into it. We need have no worry that Donald is going to drown, but getting eaten by sharks is quite another thing altogether. And unlike Daffy, who flew now and again when the plot demanded it, at least in the early years, I’m not sure I have ever in my life see Donald Duck fly, so he sure isn’t escaping from the sharks that way.

It’s kind of amazing how often Donald’s nemesis in a cartoon is an insect of some sort. Spike appeared in more cartoons than Humphrey the Bear, albeit with several redesigns and new names along the way. There’s at least one where Donald is up against ants. And because of the strange universe inhabited by Disney characters, he’s up against intelligent insects; there’s one, which I believe we’ve discussed here before, where Spike is actually his business partner for a while. I can’t help wondering if the animators were trying to give Donald an enemy where he’d at least have the advantage of size.

It isn’t just that Donald tends to come to battles of wits essentially unarmed. It’s that he cannot keep his temper, and when he loses his temper, any intelligence he does have goes flying out the window. However, I’m not much inclined to care, as I really do wish Spike could have a nice, quiet day at the beach just like the rest of us, if that’s what he wants. So the IMDb goofs says that Spike would die if he flew into the ocean, and goodness knows that would be true enough for a real bee. But he’s a cartoon bee, and cartoon bees are entitled to an afternoon off now and again, right?

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