blowfly postscript

For those who cannot never hear too many gross biology stories:

Maggots usually move away from the corpse into a somewhat drier area, and for them "drier" usually means "up." But moving up is not always a successful strategy. Once while working a very wet habitat, my students and I arrived early in the morning to find that maggots were leaving our dead pigs [proxies for human bodies] in search of a drier place to pupate. There was no dry area for several miles, but maggots have limited perceptions. They climbed trees. They crawled up the trunk, moved along the branches to their tips, and then fell back to the ground. Since there were three pigs in the area, each with thousands of maggots leaving to climb trees and eventually fall back down, it was quite literally raining maggots. The deluge was so bad that we had to return to the laboratory for umbrellas so that we could finish our sampling.

~ care of M. Lee Goff
A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solve Crimes

a culture of killers

I've been unpleasant lately and a large part is due to the oppressive weather. The heat and humidity are more characteristic of the southernishness of my youth. New England is unaccustomed to multiple days in excess of 90°F — let along nuzzling up to 100°F. And it's sticky. The window air conditioners work great except that the rooms become stale and noisy. I know it could be worse because I've opened the drywall hatch to the attic a couple of times and the blast of hot air is powerful. Good to know the ceiling insulation is doing its work.

Last night, I'm trying to do some work before going to bed. I'm tired of the purr of the air conditioner but I have yet to become sleepy. But irritable I was — and then a fly shows up in my office. Of course, it loves the only light sources which include the desk lamp and the computer monitor. It is a sizable fly but quick. I covered my just-poured Guinness with a camping catalog and tried to knock it down and out with a flyswatter. Yes, a disaster in the making: glass, books, suds, electronics — I showed some reserve. But had no luck. The killer in me wanted this thing dead and I needed to know it was no longer living anywhere in my house. Yes, this insecticidal rage is more common than we might want to believe.

Cleverly, I turned on another lamp that had a very alluring incandescent bulb. In moments, the fly alighted on the stem of the lamp — and I whomped it with the fly swatter. It wasn't a smash job but more of a "set to stun" attack. Curious, I scooped it up with the swatter (not about to touch the bastard!) and inspected with a handy-dandy magnifier. It was iridescent green with big eyes. Not a standard housefly as far as I could tell. But then i's legs twitched and there was a sudden transition in form from three- to two-dimensions. Totally dead.

Turns out there are several online resources available for identifying insects. I went forward using my memory rather than searching for a "flattened fauna" field guide for bugs. In very short order (sorry: bad biology joke there) I discovered that my invading insect was a blowfly. Pretty? Perhaps. But why was it flying around upstairs at night? Gulp. Killer confession. It was because of me.

Last year, I swore I heard little paws scampering in the attic. Even though my well-rested companion claimed it was the sound of the ceiling fan, I would not be deterred. I bought a pair of standard mousetraps at the hardware store, baited one with peanut butter, and placed in in the attic. And forgot about it. Then, sometime in winter, I checked (no oven blast of hot air by then) — and the trap was upside down. I flipped it over to reveal the mouse corpse. Who knows how long it had been there. Long enough to leave a body oil corpse stain on the beam.

This spring, I thought I was hearing little claws running above and re-set the trap. A couple of nights later, there was some weird snapping and bumping above — but I was half-awake and brushed it off. When I checked the next day, the trap ... was gone! There were little poop pellets. But the trap must have been carried away. And because the house's original pitched and shingled roof still shows in the attic, I surmised that the unfortunate rodent got trapped, flopped away, and fell into a deep recess of the walls. I could not see it. For good measure, I set the second trap (this time on a larger piece of old drywall) and caught a mouse and disposed of it they way one is supposed to — unlike it's poor kindred whose skeleton will be discovered decades from now. Except for the fly.

Turns out the blowfly is infamous for finding carrion. It can detect the smell of a carcass from several miles away. Was my late night visitor looking for the mouse in the house? Or was this the offspring from the eggs laid in the body several weeks ago? What have I begun and when (or how) will it end? Good luck with your bug invaders!

to soon be going nowither

July 12 is a good day to being born by virtue of the company. According to the Writer's Almanac, today was born Pablo Neruda (1904) and Julius Caesar (100 BC). Also, in 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born. His parents named him David Henry; hence, we share the day of birth and a middle name. As my trip to the mountains is just nearing two weeks away, Thoreau's dreams of open roads and trails resonate.

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of earth, or its uppermost crust; … along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; … where your head is more in heaven than your feet are on earth; … where you can walk and think with the least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; … by which you may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

To a certain extent, the trek will be purposeful. We will measure how much trail we have covered and how far we have left to go. But the openness is what I am eager to experience. All the more, I realize the need to make the best of preparations so I not only have what I require for the hike but also can leave behind those matters which will be beyond my influence while I am away. That is how this expedition becomes a pilgrimage. It is an opportunity to re-learn how to live in the moment and release what is not within my control.

old timer stories

In a land where frog gigging was not all that uncommon and where fireworks tents added color to the July landscape, my parents were not too keen on firecrackers. Sparklers? Yes. But nothing that exploded. Not even cap guns. But my buddy Tim, who lived a bike ride away on the other side of town, had less restrictive parents. I don't know that we did fireworks at his house every year. And I am puzzled by how two geeky junior high kids arranged any of this given that it was summer time and all we had for crosstown communication were landlines connected to hulking plastic wall-mounted telephones. Somehow we managed.

Tim just posted photos from his most recent July Fourth celebration. It was a very similar backyard to the one in which he and I lit fireworks. I remember his chocolate Lab named Justice being displeased by our pyrotechnics. I remember the satisfying sound and sight of a large coffee can bumping off the turf from a tiny explosion. The concrete pad of his patio was charred and stained by the small smoke bombs. When we were done, there were teeny scraps of paper in little red, white and blue clumps all over the grass. The air was thickened by the humidity and black powder smoke. I recall cicadas sawing out their songs and the enviable lumbering noise of his central air conditioning unit.

Since I was the guest and a little bit scared of the punks and fire and so on, my memory was that Tim did most of the lighting of fuses. Not every firecracker exploded as it should and those were opportunities for ingenuity. A couple of times, we joined a dud and an unlit firecracker with the same fuse and sometimes they would rip themselves apart in quick succession. While not especially dangerous, there was enough uncertainty and volume to keep two 13 year olds entertained.

As Tim retrieved one dud, he inspected the fuse end just in time to see that a small glow inside. He flung the firecracker and it exploded in mid-air halfway between us. The detonation was enough to make our ears ring. No fingers torn open, no flesh burned, no lasting evidence of this near miss. However, that brief incident not only gave us our story for the day, but became embedded in our minds.

I didn’t remember this event until I saw Tim’s pictures. I have been around plenty of fireworks since then so it must have been my association of Tim and July Fourth. I wrote a quick comment to his online photos just to see if he shared that memory. He does. He reported that he tells that story every July 4th to his children. And grandchildren. I know that math makes perfectly good sense as the years have rolled by: Tim married young and hurriedly, he later lost his wife in a car accident, and has since re-married and (I’m guessing here) is a trusted physician in the Midwest. But while I so busy doing other stuff, how did my firecracker memory become an annual mini-lecture my boyhood friend now gives to those who can hardly wait to tear open the cellophane and put heat to explosives?

my writing stimulus package

Sometimes, my efforts to write go well. Those moments are fleeting, so sweet and brief that I wonder if they are imagined. More often, or more memorable, is when the writing gets tough. I know I am not alone in feeling I have slid off the road into a ditch. And bloggers are especially adept at compiling quotations by genuine writers about their struggles. But this isn’t about not feeling alone. It’s about not feeling like I cannot write.

Years ago when we would occasionally drive to the next state to visit a sibling and his young family, I would return home on Sunday fully invigorated for the work week. On such visits, the conversations were flat and dull. There was some fun, but it often was about babies tipping over or watching the kids evacuate the TV room during the scary scenes of a Disney movie. I was as if I was parked facing uphill and could see a in my review mirror a gray and cold town that would engulf me if I rolled backward. The light would turn green, I’d pop the clutch, and accelerate so my stomach rose when I crested the hill.

My inspiration comes from a fear of the dank maw of mediocrity. When I encounter writing that is deft and delightful, I feel inadequate. For example, the sentence below made be chuckle out loud. And the awe it creates would debilitate me if I followed the maxim of reading a great deal for inspiration:

Each resident was required to tie his or her dog up in the yard until it barked itself cross-eyed, presumably to frighten off coyotes.

I am humbled by great writing such as this. In contrast, I feel primed to write because of exposure to counter-examples. My inspiration then is not to reach the expert level but to distance myself from the worst. My writing is stimulated by a drive to move away from the chaff and dross. Here have been my recent sources of inspiration.

First, campfire conversations do not need to be deep existential discussions. I appreciate a good fart joke as much as any boy. But re-enactments of scenes from multiple Will Farrell movies just isn’t quite the same. I just looked at this clip and discovered that the version I witnessed in the Minnesota wilderness had been rendered with astonishing accuracy: sequence, scene, script -- all of it. Similarly, reading someone else’s former doc student’s writing encourages me to write. The force-fit of a theory, the data that reads like random snatches of conversation, the unsubstantiated findings -- it all makes me shudder as a consumer. But it inspires me to show how writing might be done. Third, I read a grant proposal written by a guy whose last name was the same as that of the small Floridian business college. He had started his own college and named it after himself. And it was accredited. The grant was not badly written although not especially academic in style. But it was audacious in its conceptualization, especially in wanting to receive federal dollars to improve science literacy of business college students. Again: inspiring.

Finally, perhaps this very writing sample will incite others to write in ways that place a heavy, muddy boot on this crummy essay. To write well is more a matter of writing a little better than the next guy. It’s akin to doing well enough to not be eliminated in the first round. Most nations will not win the World Cup. To even be there is better than watching from home. Write back!