Demise of the Flies

When I bite into Cheerios, depending upon how long they have been soaking in milk, I anticipate a certain crunch, a crisp crumbling of the exterior wall of the oat circle, giving way to the welcome tenderizing by the milk moat surrounding it.

When drinking a beverage while watching evening television, one does not anticipate such a crunch. Instead, there should be the silk-smooth sensation of a liquid draining down the esophagus after a vibrant, refreshing taste exchange with an appreciative tongue.

While it’s not exactly the esophagus, my larynx is a well-behaved esophageal neighbor. Some years ago in a doctor’s office, a skilled specialist remarked on the size of my larynx. I sought his help after suffering unfortunate damage to my throat cartilage from a blow to the throat. Looking down upon me in the examining room were signed photographs from the doctor’s former appreciative patients; Barbra Streisand lovingly encouraged me that I had an excellent doctor. “Wow!” exclaimed my doctor upon initial examination, “I’ll bet you can really sing loudly! I’ve never seen a larynx this big!” This statement, coming from Barbra Streisand’s former doctor, caused me to swell with pride. And, yes, darn it, I can sing loudly, and hold a tune at that; after all, I had made it into my college men’s glee club. Admitting a slight boast, I confess that I can swallow a dozen pills in one pharyngeally-enlarged gulp.

But back to my esophageal interaction with beverages. A few months ago, while sipping my favorite beverage of choice while watching late night television, my wife explained what transpired because I didn’t recall it in detail. She explained that upon a certain fateful beverage sip, I inexplicably launched myself out of my chair, straight up, arms flailing outward while discharging the offending beverage several feet into the room. It was the classic television spit take—eyes bulged, buttocks clenched, the spew of mouth content arcing across the room.

What I had spat out possessed fur, accompanied by dangly-leggy things, and a sizable center pouch. This is what I guessed it comprised of, considering I had munched it several times before realizing it had no welcome place in my mouth or digestive system. It was a housefly, pierced by my teeth, its anatomy rearranged. I had very likely decapitated it before my oral explosion.

I had never had that happen before or since. Until last night. It was a déjà vu experience. Last night, I picked up my glass. I sipped. My lips recorded that same grotesque texture, that furry interloper touching my lips, the same sensation I had experienced several months prior. Another housefly in my glass! But that previous episode had taught me a lesson; my lips quickly sealed tight against the fur and the dangly legs and the bulgy, multi-mirroring eyes of another housefly. This time I locked him out of my mouth, just barely, and into my glass he went. I held the glass to the light to examine the floating corpse. Yes, he was indeed immobile. Drowned. Dead. I tentatively fished the deceased housefly out of my glass and placed him carefully on my beverage’s fabric coaster.

He has lain there for two days now, time enough to check for any possible movements or twitches of life, for I do not think a fly possesses a pulse. Time to discard him, whether disassembled by a trip down the garbage disposal, consolidated with the other trash bin rubbish, or centrifuged down the toilet.

Although a solitary fly possesses both a mother and father, and probably thousands of sisters and brothers, it’s difficult to get worked up over the death of a fly. It’s just one fly. Gone, never realizing it was alive.

But imagine the simultaneous hatching of billions of them, all headed your direction. Pharaoh rightly owned that plague sent him with the message: Hey. Listen up. Obey. Straighten up and fly right. Fly right.

So I ask myself: this one, lone, dead fly—what message did he carry to me?