Showing posts with label Michelle Duggar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michelle Duggar. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

When houseflies meet barflies


I’d like to be a fly on the wall anytime flies on the wall discuss their bafflement over why any human would like to be a fly on the wall.

I’m so proud of that nifty line I vow to use it any time I write about flies, which means I’ll use it about twice every 1,711 times I post.

Yes, this is only the second post I’ve ever devoted to the common housefly or Musca domestica in Roadrunner speak.

I don’t know why they’re known as houseflies. The definition seems too narrow for something so ubiquitous. In the summer, they’re everywhere. It begs the question of what cavemen called houseflies.

Caveflies?

A single female can lay as many as 500 eggs. Makes Michelle Duggar look like a piker.

Scientists estimate there are 300,000 species of flies in the world.

Make that 300,001 if you count the species to which I’ve belonged since, oh, about the 5th grade.

Of course, I’m talking about the common barfly: Alcoholus Sippus AllDayLongus.

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when the barflies were talking about the houseflies. My ears would have been burning.

Last month we had one of those weeks where the flies seemed like they were everywhere.

They’re so damned obnoxious — and I mean the houseflies, not my drinking buddies.

The housefly talk was upsetting to me because I heard I was being blamed for their abundance.

Some were saying the rare seasonal increase was because I kept my window open up here in the office, a survival necessity when the temperatures climb and this shabby little place begins to bake.

A fellow barfly told me. 

“People are saying it’s all your fault. They’re saying the flies come in through your office window because you don’t have a screen in,” he said.

The latter was true. I don’t have a screen. But what I also don’t have are flies.

It made sense to me. I’m way up on the 3rd floor. For a fly to get in here it would likely to have had flown straight up three stories to my tiny open window. Seems like a lot of work.

What’s the incentive? It’s not like I’m grilling cheeseburgers up here. 

It’d like me standing at the base of El Capitan in Yosemite and telling all the nearby picnickers, “Hey! I have an idea!”

Then the flies would have to all come through the window — and here’s where it gets like Tom Cruise in the “Mission Impossible” movies — zoom past my desk without me noticing, careen down three flights of stairs, down a hallway, through an always-closed glass door, around a bend and finally into the sudsy sanctuary of the bar to bedevil.

It would be the most adrenalized burst of industrious behavior since at least before I began blogging here.

Me, I enjoy having a certain number of flies around. Brings out the soldier of fortune in me. Feels like combat, like the 1983 kind when USA whomped on Granada 

I get the same feeling swatting a fly with a rolled up newspaper as I do crushing a long drive down the middle of the fairway.

It’s sublime.

Alas, fly season is coming to an end. The frosts will soon be upon us and the flies will dissipate for another year.

I won’t miss them one bit.

What’s surprising for something so uncommonly annoying is how fleeting life for the common fly can be.

A typical housefly’s lifespan is a mere 14 to 28 days. 

Yes, time flies when it’s fly time.


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Monday, August 24, 2015

Animal annoyances? Let's blame Noah


I wonder how different the world would be today if on Noah’s ark someone had thought to bring along a fly swatter.
It’d probably be a lot less annoying.
They drive me nuts.
Bees do, too, of course. But bees provide tangible benefits. They pollinate and make delicious honey.
What do common houseflys do?
Well, I looked it up. The answer doesn’t bolster their case for ark inclusion.
Each female fly can lay about 500 eggs, a reproductive feat that makes Michelle Duggar look like a piker.
How do these flies contribute? They spend their entire month-long life cycle feasting on garbage, carrion and feces.
I could see this being beneficial to the circle of life only if they were capable of taking really, really big bites, but a diet like that magnified many times over would lead to a slew of other bigger and even more disgusting problems.
I wish some Biblical archeologist would announce he or she has found Noah’s passenger manifest.
I have to imagine many of the species with which he started out didn’t make the entire cruise, which if you believe Genesis 7:11-13 lasted 370 days.
Some likely died en route.
Remember, the ark had no qualified veterinarian. Crew skills likely tended toward  farming, carpentry and, at least with the skipper, the kind of meteorological wisdom even weather savants like Al Roker are bound to envy.
I nurture a theory that unicorns were on the ark but became too cross-eyed to function and just died off only to be resurrected on the “My Little Pony” show.
Some animals may have been deemed too dangerous or annoying to preserve.
Maybe scores of vicious, stinky animals we’ve never heard of once roamed the earth and either Noah or one of his crewmen decided to play God and just tossed the varmints overboard. 
We’d have no way of knowing.
If that’s the case, I wish they’d have gone a few steps farther and gotten rid of all the snakes, rats, roaches, pigeons, etc.
If our neighbors’ husky had been on the voyage, it’s likely we’d now be living in a dogless world.
Maya is left out all day and all night and does nothing but bark, bark, bark. It’s endless. It robs us of both sleep and any chance of summer peace.
Maybe I’m being too harsh.
I shouldn’t say I’d get rid of the dog. That’s cruel.
I’d get rid of the neighbors.
I’d also like to see archeologists announce they’d found a menu detailing just what did they ate on the ark?
Cruises have always been about rapacious gluttony. Why should Noah’s cruise have been any different? Guaranteed, there was no casino. There was nothing to do but either tend to the animals or eat them.
And I can practically guarantee there was no salad bar. It had to be mostly all protein.
The animals, we are told, were boarded two-by-two. Many of them likely reproduced during their time. Screwing was all they had to do, much like some of today’s swinger-themed cruises.
But none of the tasty mammals were as prolific as the houseflies (aside: what did cavemen call houseflies?).
You’d have to think over 370 days the crew developed a toothy fondness for particularly delicious animals.
I wonder if there were some now-forgotten animals made of such delicious substance that they were right there on the ark eaten to extinction, animals so tasty that it was impossible to stop eating them until it was gone.
Like really big Peeps!
Or maybe at one time there were animals they called Bacons, too delicious to survive.
I guess I wish Noah had been a little more choosey. The world is full of animal annoyances
Some of them legitimate, some what I guess you could call “petty.”
As for annoying humans, well, that ship has sailed.
No sense in complaining. We just have to learn to live and let live.
So I’ll not say another word.
Not one peep.

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