Splat...There Goes Another One...

Splat...there goes another one...we have a fly swatter...it's awfully good...very satisfying to squelch yet another fly on the window until the sun shines through and all the yucky bits show up so clearly...

Time I think, to get the dreadful sticky strips out...some days they have to be changed for a new one by tea time...laden down with fat black flies who've had their feets in cow pats and such like...can't be doing with them...can't tolerate flies at all especially when there's a persistent one that will keep settling on your head while you're trying to read or lands just beside your hand when you're eating your supper...flap at it and it flies away...to re-emerge seconds later.

I'm always fascinated by descriptions of bodies found after days left unattended...the pathologist person can tell how long the person has been expired by the growth and development of the maggots and flies which have landed on the corpse...soft tissues, such as the eyes, are the first to go...in that respect, flies are brilliant at their task of removing the remains of animals...and humans. Rather like advanced garbage collectors I suppose...

Magpies, Crows and Jackdaws clear up the residue of road kill...if there's anything left over the flies are there laying their eggs, then the resulting maggots see to the rest. Nature is swift and terribly efficient...

Nowadays maggots are used to clean long standing open ulcers that haven't responded to conventional medication...much as leeches are used for the same reason. It is said that the patient can't feel either the maggots or the leeches nibbling away happily on dead flesh...just the thought gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I'll continue to squash flies with the fly-swatter and hang up strips of sticky tape to catch those I can't squash...and hope the day never comes that a smiley nurse approaches me bearing a pot of maggots...or leeches.