Flies Time

Spring has finally crept into being here, cautiously poking its nose out, after retreating again into snow and cold. But the final arrival is ever so much closer. Today for the first time I felt the need to be outside and to scout out the freeholding, seeing what survived the winter and what needs replacing or replenishing or renewing. The usual gang of birds were around, the holdover cardinals and finches and all, but so too the proverbial robins and the screeching jays. A pair of Canada geese flew over, turning in tight formation, back from wherever.


The land is still shades of brown, but shards of green begin to peek through, and all seems a state of stirring. As I gathered winter debris, I noticed a spot of shiny black on the white-painted porch rail, glinting in the sun. A closer look. My old friend and adversary, the garden-variety housefly, warming in the light. Not so far away hangs my trusty flyswatter, ready for action.


But not today. Later in the year, when warmth is the rule, and when all is fecund and fertile, when this guy and his friends gather in earnest, then will be time to act. Because, of course, they don’t respect the boundaries I would set, they lurk and sneak into the house, and buzz annoyingly and share the filth and risk virulence. Then we will be at war, I’ll be mending screens and hunting them down, using all modern technology to keep the upper hand. They don’t seem to understand that it’s a human world, that we set the rules and lay out the borders.


No, today is a day to acknowledge the fundamental truth. That this not a solely human world, that we share it with an incredible manner of all but incomprehensible fellow-travellers, that our values are not universal. That life is an amazing amalgam of beings and we’re all in this together, in all manner of ways and being.


This morning I watch him soak up the morning light, see the wings flex, wonder what goes on in that alien mind, wonder what I look like to him in that maze of compound eyes, wonder ever so briefly what it would be like to be like that. Wonder what sort of universe it is that creates horseflies and horses, people and pests. It’s a marvelous and magical place.


Later will be my time, our time. Later I will see him and his cohort as an infestation. Today is flies time, when I can see him for what he is, another manifestation of being, and a wondrous one at that.