Today I had an unusual interaction with a fly. It’s not over yet, and I’m pretty sure it won’t end well.
I’ve had many interactions with flies throughout my long life, usually totally unconsciously, as I killed them in the quickest manner without a thought. But today’s fly was different.
I left my basement office about 10:30 AM and went to the kitchen to make coffee. I felt great time pressure to get back to work as quickly as possible, and in this time of great stress for all with what happening in the world (what is happening…. just a standard communist takedown of the Western world) I was completely fixated on myself and in no mood for delays. The fly buzzed past and without a thought I lashed out with the back of my right hand and, amazingly, hit him hard. He bounced off the wall and fell by the toaster, obviously hurt.
Instantly remorse hits me. I look at him, wishing I could back up 5 seconds and just let him fly by, and this whole scenario never happens. He’s trying to right himself, and one of his wings is now displaced somehow. I wish I could just fix him and set him free again. Why did I do that? I’m 170lbs, he’s a few ounces at most, and the way I hit him was full of anger and violence and must have shaken or broken every solid object in his body. And all this without any hesitation, just a smack out of nowhere, for doing what flies do – flying by.
I’m wondering and hoping that there is some hope for him, that I can perhaps help recover him (her?) to the point of flying again, because that’s what flies do. He’s able to walk in circles after a while, and the more I watch him the more I can connect with his situation, a helpless victim of a much larger and violent animal lashing out without any conscious concept of what he’s doing or the consequences. And although this is ‘just’ a fly… who am I to say what ‘just’ is? I’m not able to just let him die, so I try in some pathetic way to help. After hitting him with a sledgehammer, I offer a band-aid.
I put a paper towel down and he clings to it… and walks onto my hand. At first I’m repulsed at a fly walking on me… but he’s tiny and tickles and before long he’s just a tiny hurt creature looking for help. I take him into the backyard theorizing that’s the kindest thing to do… let him go in his natural environment. But today we are setting temperature records, it’s 114.5F at the peak, and the heat feels like it’s sucking the life out of every breath. I wonder how fly’s deal with heat. I put him on the ground in the grass near a small walkway, in the shady area, and put some water close by. I’m watching him now, letting my boring work slip into the background, and empathizing with this small creature that I’ve so badly damaged. His one wing now appears to be more in place and I’m praying he might fly. At my prompting he walks back onto the paper towel and I feel a great wave of relief when he ‘flies’ away…. or so I thought. A closer look reveals he’s on the ground a few inches away, he must have jumped rather than flew. I watch him for another 10 minutes, sitting quietly, or walking in circles, or clinging upside down to grass as it appears he no longer has balance.
His one wing is now back into a better position, not obviously and grotesquely out of place, but my heart sinks when I see the right side of his body (his ‘thorax’? I’ll call it his thorax…) is split open and his white intestines have spilled out. This is just under his right wing. It just hurts to see this, because it feels like it’s me I’m looking at, I’ve put him into this position though my unthinking and unfeeling act of violence, for no reason at all, for just flying by like a fly does. He’s struggling for his life, disoriented, no doubt it crippling pain and fear, I’m wondering… is there anything at all I can do? To touch him and try to help would do untold damage. But still it makes me sick to see his little body destroyed like that and all because of me. After a while I stopped watching and left, hoping there would be some solution from some other source.
About 15 minutes later I returned, and amazingly, he was still there (after a few minutes of looking), hiding the in the grass and moving only when prompted. What is the kindest thing to do at this point? I’m again hit with waves of remorse…here is a tiny insect struggling for it’s life. Now it doesn’t matter that it’s an insect. I’ve looked at him enough now to see the beauty in him, the elegant architecture, the beautiful almost mystical shades of blue of his body, his tiny but perfect translucent wings, the right I now see broken off near the end. Think this break, plus the mass of intestines expelled from the thorax just under the wing preventing him from flight and probably causing great fly-pain.
I don’t want to leave him outside now, there are ants as cruel as cats hovering around. I go downstairs and find a small container that is lined with plastic, like a round cookie box, and put some dirt, grass and leaves, water, and a small clump of cat food in it. I let him climb up my hand, he walks around tickling me and I turn my hand and arm to keep him in one position where I can let him ‘fall’ into the box without too much shock, coving it with a white cloth so he can’t get out. I bring the box into the house where it’s much cooler in the air conditioning and leave him for an hour. Is this the right thing to do?
I decide again that nature is the best approach, so I take him into the greenhouse, which is stifling hot, but there are few ants or other predators. After some prompting he walks out of his cookie far and onto the plain dull black dry earth in the greenhouse, looking completely out of place. Flies don’t walk around in dirt, they fly. Wherever I leave him I’m condemning him to a death in that general environment. After 10 minutes of observing his aimless meandering, I let him walk onto my hand again, and route him back into his cookie jar. I bring him inside and put him on the dining room table, covered, but where the light can penetrate. Hours later I check on him, taking him outside to find him in the sunset light. He’s clinging to grass and doesn’t want to move, but will with some prompting, walking up the edge of the lid and nearly onto my hand before he plunges back into the jar. I thought of letting him go now in the garden, as it’s cooling down, but instead I put a bit more water into the jar and bring him back inside into the coolness. Even though he may not live the night, I’d feel better with him safely inside and away from predators. I’ll check him in the morning, and hope some miracle has occurred and he’s recovered his ability to fly. But I think not.
Morning: There is no movement in the cookie jar that I can see, he was very obvious previously by his movements. It took quite a while of carefully removing grass and dirt and leaves before I found him. He died in the night. Maybe the kindest thing would have been to let him out in the coolness of the night before, but I don’t like to let any living thing loose when it’s handicapped and out of it’s element. I took a picture of him, complete with the exploded thorax courtesy of me, then buried him in the back yard with a request that, if he can, he forgive my selfish impulsiveness. I’m always going to look at flies a bit differently.
Krishnamurti was a very serious man. When he said ‘you are the world, and the world is you’ I think he meant it literally. We are that fly, and that fly is us. And I’m really very sorry that I hit him for no reason at all. He was just being a fly.