A Fly Through the Window

[Borealis]

Front Page version

A Fly Through the Window
by Calliphora vicina, the common blow fly

Upon a late-November night by The Bay…

Water, splashing through the air, landed upon a pair of common blow flies, Calliphora vicina, that were minding their own business – minding if we may anthropomorphize the behaviors of insects who have no ability to mind. Instinct settled in and the flies lifted from the surface of a piece of 3-day old filet mignon that had escaped a garbage bag in a back alley. Hovering above the morsel, halters working to keep the flies balanced in the air, one will leave us for good, having played their part. The other returns to its prize – ovipositor primed to lay a few eggs before moving on. Yes – our friend in this tale is a female fly, but this information may be irrelevant to where she will take us. Moments later - by a human sense of time, as a fly has no way of marking time other than some primevil circadian reference, the fly is alerted by a large object flying through the air, primed to land on our fly – but her (if we may continue to provide a more human-friendly description of our… heroine?) multifaceted eyes pick up the danger and off this fly goes – high into the air as what we recognize as a bulging bag of garbage lands and splits open, with filth and plastic waste spilling into the alley.

High into the air the fly moves, its senses attracted by more goodies – a dead pigeon on a decrotive ledge above a window. Once more it lands, prepared to lay, saliva already dripping from it’s mouthparts, labella protruding to lap up any nutrients – for everything has the potential to provide our common blow fly with the energy it needs to feed and procreate before it’s wings beat their last beat.

A loud noise comes from far above, but it is the smell of rotten that wafts down towards our friend, in a way, calling her, and she follows that up – high above the dark alley, the morsel of beef long forgotten as the calliphorid flies into the large building and lands upon a table just inside the window. The room is large, and filled with many moving animals who are much, much larger than the fly, emitting sound – some soft, some extremely loud, but the fly ignores this, and instead it follow’s it’s senses and comes upon a table filled with rotten milk and aged meats – what you may recognize as a charcuterie plate, but our friend the Calliphora vicina sees as a smorgasbord of delicious tastes and copious spots to oviposit.

If we were the fly that flew through the window, we might recognize the faces of those in attendance. Their voices would be familiar and the sounds would be words, that would not just have meaning on their own – we would be privvy to significant information. But the fly? It cares nothing of ‘exerting voting rights’ or ‘honoring the wishes of the deceased’ – for it would rather lay eggs upon the deceased and have its larvae – maggots, feed and grow and molt – and repeat, until it pupated and became an adult - a feeding, breeding, Calliphora vicina. Millions of years of evolution probably seperates this lone fly from those which may have feed upon the owner of whose wishes the fly cannot comprehend in this setting – for it is just a fly – a simple blow fly.

The fly moves on from cheese to something liquid, that yet smells of death – of fermentation, yet sweet, landing on the edge of a glass; a red wine – you might know it as such, and the truth that evades the fly is that it is a fine one, but she is shooed away by one of the large beings who, in reaching for its glass of the red liquid, blurts out a sound that we’d recognize as the word ‘lion’ and after a sip ‘that’s ludicrous’ and then slams the glass down, only to see it break, spilling the delectable red liquid across the table – teasing the fly as it sits perched upon a warm spot, soaking in some heat on what was a cold night outside. The angry one – the blow fly can tell – that it can sense, some how, some way, though it could never tell you how it knows – it is just a fly, after all, and cannot speak – the angry one gets up and walks over to the table with the charcuterie the fly has already visited – and laid upon, and is followed by another, and there they whisper away, as the fly hops down to the table and begins to imbibe upon the spilled wine.

After a moment or two – in human time, a giant cloth sweeps across the table and clears the mess of glass and wine, and our fly takes off once more – slightly unsteady as the product of fermentation effects our calliphorid as much as those who are circulating about the room. She moves from plate to plate, sampling, laying, amongst the heard yet uncomprehended sounds of ‘will’ and ‘Chris’ and ‘is that even legal’. She pauses to clean herself along a baseboard, next to a heat register, and if our blow fly could register the sounds of ‘murder’ and ‘casino’ and ‘Dad’ like you or I could, our unintentional evesdropping friend would know the full story and how it will end, but give Calliphora vicina another million years of evolution and it will continue to be just what it is – a simple blow fly.

[Arroyos]

Buzz buzz buzz BUZZ! (Which, in fly language, roughly translates to ... Fuckin' brilliant!)

[Borealis]

Thanks Bob!

I've used this a couple of times - including way back when. It's a lot of fun to compose!!

[Sandgnats]

Is this a veiled shot at the Gnats

[Borealis]

Is this a veiled shot at the Gnats

Not at all!

[Sandgnats]

Is this a veiled shot at the Gnats

Not at all!

ummm hmmm