I cannot for the life of me understand the reasoning of a black fly. It literally has the whole world at its wingtips and yet it sits on the side of my house and waits for me to open the door so it can enter. Why? Are flies interested in interior decorating? Do they want to compare my house with the one next door?
If that is the case, I should be insulted since most flies who enter my house circle the living room once and bang on the window to get out again. Is it the smell? Do I not have enough rotten meat lying around?
Sometimes I think that flies are the reincarnation of someone I knew who didn’t quite make it into heaven. I have had one land on my arm and look at me while it rubs its back legs together. I take a swipe and miss, and it flies once around the room and lands back on my arm again.
It’s almost like it is trying to communicate, “Hey Marty, Marty, it’s me – Mike from 8th grade gym class!”
Later, I see Mike wrapped up in a spider’s web. I want to set him free, but he and his friends did tie me up in a laundry bag full of sweaty football socks and jockstraps. It’s karma Mike.
Now flies, unlike humans, have a limited number of hours in the day in which they are active. You’re not going to find them active on a cool day, or after sundown. But in the heat of the day, they are out to play like the human masses on Waikiki Beach. The fly version of Waikiki is the cow field on the other side of my fence.
In the human version, the adults are flocking to the beach bars and pounding down Mai Tais, complete with a wedge of pineapple. The fly version has the lushes burying themselves deep into steaming wet cow pies. The hypocrisy! They fall off the wagon daily but attend Poop Anonymous meetings at night.
Have you seen pictures of how crowded the beaches in Mexico, Hawaii, and California are on a hot summer day? How about college spring break in Florida? In the fly world, one fly guy will invite another fly guy, “Hey Jake, a bunch of us are hanging out on the cow’s butt today. You want to come? I hear the ladies are crawling all over the place.”
“Hey, thanks for asking,” Jake says, “but me and my lady are hanging out on the horse’s muzzle today. It’s more family friendly. We get tired of being swatted with that cow tail.”
Now, you have your Spitfire mini flies, your B-52 Stratoliner flies- (I can’t believe they can get off the ground, but you can hear them a mile away), your Dragonfly drones (which are actually cool,) and the demons of the fly world, the horse, and the botflies.
The horse fly shows up when you are most exposed and sweaty. Try hiking on a hot day in the mountains with shorts on or your shirt off. Horse flies will land on your salty, sweaty, body and take a bite which leaves a red mark and makes you say bad words.
The botfly on the other hand, lives in countries like Costa Rica. They grab a mosquito out of the air and lay their eggs on it. The mosquito then bites a human, depositing the fly eggs under the human’s skin. As the larva grows, a red bump forms on the flesh and when they are ready to hatch, the botfly maggots emerge through the skin. This is not something you want to have happen at a dinner party. Botflies are reason enough not to explore the jungles of Costa Rica or the Amazon. They say the only way to keep the flies away is to have a tarantula riding on your pith helmet. Flies get freaked at the sight of tarantulas.
So here I sit on my deck chair under an umbrella to avoid the midday sun. A fly keeps landing on my book even though I have flipped it away three times previously. It’s almost like it wants my attention. Like it wants to tell me something. I slam the book closed, splattering it between the pages.
“Sorry Mike. It sucks when I get even.”
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