Flies
I was thinking about the expression “he would not hurt a fly”. If we have an insect buzzing around us we all instinctively brush it away and most of us (unless we are Buddhists) would not worry if it were knocked out of the sky permanently. Similarly we try to swat any passing housefly despite the fact that it is almost impossible to catch one unawares unless, of course, one is President Obama. Chemical assault is limited by EU rulings these days and few sprays are actually effective but we do all we can to rid ourselves of flies as they have, what appear to us, disgusting eating habits which can poison our food and make us extremely ill.
The President of the USA has enormous power and responsibility but most reports this week have been about his killing a fly. We love little furry things but not many go “Ahh” at the sight of a baby fly (aka a maggot). We claim, “not to hurt a fly”, meaning we do not hurt mammals, personally that is, we generally chose to ignore how our food is produced. The most popular sport in the country is fishing and as gardeners we wipe out as many species of invertebrate as we can manage so even our leisure pursuits impinge on nature.
Flies see not only our food as fair plunder but also gorge on the nutrients in animal excrement. They are good parents and lay their eggs where they expect a good food store, thus around the back end of sheep, which is a problem for farmers and rabbits which is a problem not unknown to me. I will not go into details but “fly-strike” is neither pleasant for the animal nor for the vet who has to deal with the outcome.
One could believe the world a better place without flies and try to obliterate them entirely but that would be seeing only half the story and risking upsetting the balance of God’s creation – oh yes, they are one of God’s creations and He does not make things by mistake, whatever we feel about them. In a world without humans, flies and their larvae do a magnificent job of clearing up dead matter, carrion and excrement and recycling the nutrients. They are unable to differentiate between cooked and uncooked meat and know nothing of our delicate digestive systems that lack resistance to the bacteria with which they cover it. We have become less well adapted as we have become more civilised and now cannot fight off disease without medical intervention. Yet another of my grandmother’s sayings was “you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die” which is something health gurus are beginning to realise. I have read a lot lately about our obsessive cleanliness and use of products that kill 99% of all known germs (including swine ‘flu) being part cause of the problem.
When you read the first five books of the Old Testament there is a lot of common sense stuff about life and keeping healthy in there. Men lived with their environment as God made it, they did not try to make the surroundings adapt to them. Let us try to do the same and tolerate all His creatures – however annoying.
