On The Fly

There's a fly zig-zagging around the room.

The door's open to let in fresh air, but with the fresh air in came a fly.  It has settled into a flight pattern that doesn't seem to really be accomplishing anything obvious.  It is not near food, other flies or me.  Nor does it seem to be ready to go sit down and read the latest National Enquirer, a publication certainly meant solely for flies.

Don't you sometimes wonder what in the world is going on in a fly's mind that makes it decide to get up off its sofa and fly around and around, acting like a tiny flying pinball?  Whatever serves as a "mind" in a fly instigates a flying mode and it flies until - what?  What the heck is it doing anyway?  

Most likely, it is both avoiding and seeking.  It's avoiding bats, birds, lizards and human fly swatters and seeking manure, dead things and slime.  Flies are attracted to moisture and suck it up with their mouth parts.  Females lay their eggs and then keep on going, flying, zig-zagging and - actually - pooping almost constantly.  Great, huh?

A while ago, a very small fly-like insect seemed intent on hovering about three inches away from my nose no matter how I waved and fanned it away.  Very irritating behavior.  Whatever the fly-like bug was doing to avoid my hand - easily a million times bigger than it was - as I swatted back and forth very spastically, is probably worth studying.

Flies are definitely alien looking with their weird multi-lensed eyes and buzzing wings.  They have two wings where most flying insects have four.  They're not cute like bees, and they carry diseases on their feet, bad diseases like cholera, dysentery; they are vectors for nearly everything we humans try to avoid in order to stay healthy.

Dogs, cats and I love to nab flies, especially right out of midair, although I have never eaten a fly like a dog will.  Not on purpose anyway.  Once or twice on bike rides, one has achieved total engulfment in my mouth, but it was rapidly ejected.  Followed by shouts of disgust and revulsion, which flies are pretty much masters at generating.  I do have a grudging admiration for their flying though, now that I see this particular fly wearing itself out as it goes about its business in the middle of the room.

If flies had been invented by, oh, terrorists, they would have no redeeming value whatsoever and annihilation of all flies would be completely justified.  Before you kill every last fly, try to imagine that they are part of the Big Picture of nature.  Other creatures find them delectable and depend on them as a major food source.  Disgustingly, they begin life as maggots, the most repulsive things of all, pretty much.   But, if you watch shows like CSI, you know that maggots do a pretty important job in the world of leftover body parts, gobbling them up rapidly, recycling like no other.

I'm not saying refrain from killing flies.  Just realize that as creepy as they may seem, as annoying as they always are, they have a place in the ecosystem.

Okay, now that I've admired this fly, I'm ready to kill it, but I'll keep my ears open for news about how flies make decisions.  Then, maybe I'll understand some politicians.

Cute Babies and Insect Feet

It's an odd thing to be looking at insect feet and wondering how they hold on to slick surfaces that are vertical, especially when everyone else is watching a cute baby gurgling and smiling.

I like cute babies, but, you know, they just cannot walk on walls or ceilings.

I don't know where to go with that thought, but there it is.

I'm glad babies don't have insect feet, because mothers would never want to nurse them up close to themselves.  You can imagine the screaming and edginess, can't you.  I hope genetic engineering never gets to that point.  Babies need to be cute so that parents won't really notice how much diapers cost.  Speaking of diapers, mothers who nurse need little porta potties to tie around their waists so babies nursing can just get potty trained at the same time.  In one end, out the other.  One stop shopping, so to speak.

I am thinking I am ready to go visit Gabriel The New again soon.  He is about a month and a half old, has gained weight steadily and is charming every visitor for miles.  His uber super mother, has finally finished her masters degree in sport psychology.

I guess, too, I could check out the insects' feet if I see any while I'm there.  Don't you think it's like Star Wars that insects can walk on water, rest upside down on ceilings, migrate hundreds and hundreds of miles?  Not one single insect looks capable of doing anything, really, but they do all sorts of bizarre things.  I mean, you aeronautical engineers, what are the chances a bee can actually fly?  I'm pretty sure no jets are patterned after them.

Babies, on the other hand, grow like mad when you aren't looking.  They get really stout, then they fall asleep solid as a little rock and grow taller all at once.  I heard that some babies have actually been measured after a 24-hour growth spurt two inches longer.  That's equal to insect feats. Or their feet.  

It's all mind-boggling, no matter which creature you choose to admire.  What can you say except it's all much stranger than fiction.  You can't make that stuff up.  

A Tiny Fly

I noticed the tiniest fly I'd ever seen in my life today.  I suppose it was a fly; it had wings and landed on my computer like one, but it was so small I could hardly see it.  It seemed to have actually made a decision to land on my keyboard, but how?  I can't imagine it had a brain.  Something else, a remote control?  I'm talking about a speck of a fly the size of the tip of a pin.  The tip!

I usually don't care much about insects, but this one was exceptional, almost like a dimensional shift from some other realm.  I guess I assumed it was innocent and had no potential to infect or invade my skin, but I may have been wrong.  An oversized six- or eight-legged creature whose exoskeleton crunches when swatted or whose guts spurt out when flattened is, I automatically assume, intensely poisonous and horrible.  But, I really don't know.  I don't get very far beyond the initial blood-curdling scream and subsequent assault with weapons of mass destruction.

My squeamishness about slithering, creeping and jittering insects who dart suddenly from crevices and cracks has never abated in my whole entire life.  They look different, creepy.  Kill them, I say.

And yet I believe that all living things make up a complex and interrelated web of life.  It's my prerogative to annihilate the few that come into my house.  The rest I leave alone.  Obviously not quite a Buddhist, I try to tolerate most living things.  But not spiders, ever.  Apologies to readers who enjoy spiders for some completely unfathomable reason.  Consciously, I know spiders eat species known to be annoying to people - like flies for instance - but my subconscious says no way, kill it, ruin it, smash it to bits.

The infinitesimally small fly I saw today survived me because it was such a curiosity, being so small and capable of doing everything fly, possibly without any brain whatsoever.  Quite a strategy.  I think the military could adopt this somehow, don't you?