Flies are vital, but they feel like the enemy - Joe Bennett

Columnist Joe Bennett says his hatred for flies is visceral and instinctive. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

I know of only one good fly. It perched on Mike Pence’s hair during a live television interview and Pence didn’t notice. It was a telling image of Trump’s obsequious second-in-command.

No doubt flies are a vital link in the web of life, detritivores without which we would be swamped with rotting stuff, but they feel like the enemy. They represent the entropy that will get us in the end. They are the inevitable on six legs, spoliation on the wing, decay made flesh.

Flies eat by dissolving food in digestive juices before sucking it up. David Attenborough showed me. I have found it hard to forgive him, impossible to forgive them. One touch of a fly on my food and my gorge rises like an elevator.

When William Golding wanted a totem of evil, a “reason why it’s no-go”, he put a pig’s head on a stick and called it the Lord of the Flies. A fly is the devil made insect - black, hairy, repellent.

They say a nice person wouldn’t hurt a fly. I am not a nice person. My hatred for flies is visceral and instinctive. It starts with the hairs in my ear. A fly’s buzz makes them tingle.

On the instant I am a man with a mission to kill. I don’t care how the fly dies - by swat or spray or vile obliterative smear - only that it dies.

So when, after breakfast this warm morning, a fly announced its presence in the kitchen with a drowsy buzz, it was the bell to start a cage fight to the death.

Your best chance with a fly is your first chance. Swing and miss and the fly will dart and fizz with added energy. So, swat in hand, I was all stealth, I was Indian tracker.

The fly, unsuspecting, perched on a window, its weightless cloven hooves suckering the glass. I raised the swat. It pays not to go too hard. A smear on the window is not the worry - a smear’s like a trophy on the wall of the billiard room - but a big swing sends a rush of air that can alert a fly.

I swung just as the fly took off, and felt the tiny thrilling weight of its body striking the plastic swat. A hit, a palpable hit. The fly landed fizzing on its back on the windowsill and I went in for the kill before it could right itself. But the swat caught on the backswing, twisted and I hit the fly a half-blow that sent it up a few inches into the air and then down into the near slot on the toaster. I had a fly in my toaster.

I peered into the slot. The fly was moving but seemed half-stunned. I slid the crumb tray out from underneath. No fly. I peered back in the slot. The fly was standing on a perforated floor that supports the toast but lets the crumbs fall through.

I tipped the toaster upside down over the sink. Toast particles rained, but no fly. The creature was still clinging on among the metal riggery, the electrified scaffolding. I was eager to shift it before its trespass rendered the toaster unusable. You can’t wash a toaster. Then a thought arose like the sun from the sea: the toaster was still plugged in.

I had no moral qualms whatsoever about toasting the fly. I’d be as gleeful as the puritans who burned heretics at the stake, would relish the wisp of smoke as its wings caught. But my finger dithered on the switch, because every slice of toast thereafter would taste of burned fly.

As I hesitated, out from the toaster flew the fly. What resilience inhabits even the meanest creature. But this one would not live. I closed the kitchen door lest it escape. I got it, finally, when it perched on a curtain. Its last morning had ended. But not its legacy.

I shoved a basting brush down the toaster slot and swept, feebly, where the fly had been. I turned the toaster on to cleanse itself by cauterisation. I toasted a slice of bread and threw it away. I toasted another and threw that away too.

When I toasted a third, I couldn’t butter it or eat it until I’d cut off the corner that had stood where the fly had stood. I suspect I may find an excuse to buy a new toaster.

Flies win in the end.