Around about this time last week, a fly flew into the office. Not a remarkable occurrence for an August morning, you might think, but like the beating of a butterfly’s wings, it triggered a chain of reactions that, while probably not responsible for the typhoon in China, did raise a few eyebrows in Reigate.
The fly made its presence known by landing on my hand and then doing that thing flies do of flying off in a loop and landing back in the same place again. Fourteen times. They say foxes are losing their fear of man but this critter was bold as brass. In fact, you could say it was pretty fly (for a house fly).
Fortunately for it (I’ve no idea what sex it was), the Buddhist in me prevented me from introducing it violently to a copy of The Orcadian, the esteemed local rag of the Orkney islands and preferred reading matter among orcs, which, for reasons too complicated to go into, happened to be lying around.
Apparently flies have an affinity for humans. They make a habit of following us around. If dog is man’s best friend, man is fly’s. In parts of the globe where there are no humans, there are no flies either. So when you see them swarming around the rear end of a cow, be wary. It’s not the cow they want, it’s you.
Anyway, come Monday the fly was still buzzing around, which prompted someone to ask, “How long does a fly live?” and the floodgates opened.
The quick answer to that question is 28 days, or perhaps five, or maybe seven or eight, or 21, depending on which website you look at. In fact, the more you look for information about the common house fly (Musca domestica), the more conflicting ‘facts’ you find – which probably says more about the Internet than the fly. Here’s one of my favourites, from Pest World for Kids.
“Most flies live an average of 21 days and take on various shapes throughout their short lives.”
Various shapes? See that teapot over there? Don’t be fooled, it’s actually a fly. Someone’s been reading too much Kafka. Surely one of the features of the common house fly is that they are all the same shape, and indeed size. You never see a baby one, do you? Or a really overgrown one. It’s as if they all hatch out fully grown, live for their seven or eight days or maybe 21 or 28, and then turn up their toes without ever growing.
Another explanation for the discrepancy in a fly’s life expectancy is, of course, that very few of them die a natural death. Prior to World War I, the average life expectancy in Britain was 50 (I’m talking men now, not flies). For a man in the East End of London it was just 30. Today it’s 79. That’s not because the human race has become twice as resilient in the last 100 years, it’s because we’re not being squished by war and disease to quite the same extent.
Apply the same lifestyle improvements to the fly and it most probably would live to the full ‘one score days and eight’. It’s just as well that doesn’t happen, though, because if it did the world would be so overpopulated with the blighters we’d be buried 15 feet deep in them. That’s true, by the way. Someone worked it out.
The next thing that threw me in my fly-based research was the very name ‘fly’. Notwithstanding the fact that it shares its name with numerous other objects, from part of a tent to a song by the Jam, to the dangerously toothed closure on a man’s trousers, I’ve always believed the fly to be the most appropriately named creature on Earth – the ultimate “does what it says on the tin” beastie. Have you ever seen a cow cow? No. Or a duck duck? It would probably fare a lot better if it did once in a while. You might claim to have heard a whale wail but I’m not allowing that one. Does a fish fish? Does an ocelot oss a lot?
Preposterous.
But now my research casts doubt on the fly and its ability to fly. One thing all sources seem to agree on is that, despite giving the impression of being incessantly on the wing, the average house fly only covers about a mile a day, preferring to walk whenever possible. This may be due to the fact that it keeps its taste buds on its feet, which is why it tends to walk all over your pork chop before tucking in. Or it could just be plain laziness.
There is one particular house fly on record as having covered 20 miles in a day but it probably hitched a lift on the back of a lorry. Come on! Are you really telling me someone followed it around?
Not only are flies too idle to fly very far, they’re also pathetically slow. Top speed 4.5mph. I can walk faster than that! The more I’ve learned about flies, the more I’ve begun to lose sympathy with them. When the fly reappeared on Tuesday I barely gave it a second glance. And when it tried to win my affection by landing on my hand again, I reached out threateningly for The Orcadian. It then proceeded to buzz around the office non-stop for about 10 minutes, as if trying to prove a point, but it was all too little too late.
