Time and Flies

I have found a rather secluded spot on the back deck of our Corvallis home, seclusion is not need at the Summit cabin. Here I can sit in a semi nude condition without worrying about scandalizing the neighbors or having the police show up at our front door and being charged with indecency. In this spot I can catch some early morning rays, drink a cup of coffee or tea, depending on my mood, and read a chapter or two in my current book.

Today it is a cup of Chai with lots of milk and honey. Yum. Good drink for awaking the senses, without overstimulation. I can’t say the same for the book I have been digesting lately. The book was loaned to me by a Tuesday morning breakfast friend. One of the discussions of late, at our weekly breakfasts has been ancient civilizations prior to the rise of Sumerian and other fertile crescent cultures. An aside, which typically happens in our conversations, was about the origins or origin of life. Hence, the next week I was given a book by organic chemist Robert Shapiro. The book is titled origins: a skeptic’s guide to the creation of life on earth, and although written in 1968 it still has many salient points.

As an evolutionary biologist, confirmed atheist and avid reader of Richard Dawkins I have been delightfully surprised by Shapiro’s book. Good stuff, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

Anyhow, back to the deck and my quiet time of study, contemplation and observation. Absorbing my daily dose of vitamin D from our local star and beginning to perspire a bit, I realized that I had become the host for a beautiful little creature. Now under most circumstances I would just brush it aside and continue with what ever I was doing, or not doing. Not this time though. Maybe it had a bit to do with the book I was reading and the steps involved with the production of life on this blue planet. Or for that matter, anywhere else in this vast mysterious and full of wonder universe.

Here sat one of those small wonders on my right forearm. It was a fly, about half the size of common house fly. His (actual gender unknown) body, head, thorax and abdomen were a beautiful metallic greenish blue color. As he grazed on my forearm his iridescence sparkled in the mid morning light. I now had a choice, continue reading or observe this interloper. I choose to read. Bad decision. Well not bad, more like unsuccessful. The little guy kept drawing my attention away from the book and to him. Finally I got the point. Setting the book aside, I gave this marvelous creature my full attention.

Some might think, well that sure is a waste of time. But is it? Where else in our solar system does such a creature exist? He is unique to this planet, and in all (well maybe most) probability, the entire universe. So I sat and watched. It seems that we "big mind" creatures, on the whole, pay little or no attention to our "lesser" distant relatives. And if we do pay attention, it is usually to exploit them. After all aren’t we humans the highest evolved life form on this little blue speck of a planet? Hmm.

Occasionally I will turn my arm or hand and he will continue grazing with nary an apparent thought to his food source. His world is so much different than mine, I can not even begin to imagine it. What is it like to see through the eyes of compound lenses? What smells or tastes attracted him to my arm? As I watch him, I notice that his proboscis is shaped like an elephant’s trunk. This little vacuum cleaner is busy sucking up his midmorning snack: me. Unlike some of his relatives he neither bites, nor punctures to draw blood. He is a surface grazer. Every once in awhile he will lift off, fly around, always coming back to the same spot, before moving off through the tangle of arm hair.

After an undetermined length of grazing time, he will sit up on his back four legs and with his front two wipe his proboscis and face. I guess they haven’t developed napkins yet. And then he will proceed with his meal. Life, as short as it is for him, must be fairly good with such a large food source as me. Thank you very much.

This creature so delicate, so relatively obscure and unnoticed in my everyday world and yet in some ways so much apart of it deserved my attention today. I would like to think that in some small way he has changed my life. I know that I did his. He left with a full stomach.