The Picnic Fly

I’ve never had the slightest feeling for a fly, much less other bugs, no sympathy, no closeness. Have you? And yet, a fly is a living thing, sharing the planet with us and other breathing things. So why the distance, why the coldness? I suppose it’s the fly’s reputation – disease carrier, fecal taster, food contaminator, pesky nuisance, and, my neighbor’s favorite epithet, “sons of Baalzebug,” and other pernicious epithets the human mind dumps out on this little buzzing creature it deems obscene and disgusting, even a threat to our peace of mind, and a major flaw in an otherwise perfect God. I’ve had a few encounters with flies over the years. Once, on a picnic, I detected a fly in the potato salad, camouflaged in a coat of mayonnaise, just as I was scooping a large spoonful of it on a paper plate, next to a slice of ham. And who hasn’t had a fly scoot up his nose, or flown into his ear? – what strange sensations! Or buzzed you mad when trying to read a book? I guess the only thing I like about a fly is its Latin name, Musca domestica, better known as the common house (or kitchen) fly. And given all the social and political ills of ancient Roman society, and its hordes of enemies, the little musca may, quite literally, have been every Romans’ most invasive and irritable enemy to home and table, and, I might imagine, quite capable on occasion of unhinging a mind as even-tempered as Cicero’s.