A hoverfly landed on my knee this evening as I sat in the grass, watching Mabel the pup run around the yard with a young tree I pulled from the garden, its chosen spot not conducive to prolonged life. While Mabel treated the tree like a chew toy, I observed the hoverfly. Such interesting little creatures, they are. Largely unafraid of humans, and entirely harmless, they will land upon your skin and suck at your sweat as though it is water. Which I suppose it is — just very salty water. Not exactly something that would quench our thirst but it seems to do them well.
I remember being fascinated with bugs as a kid. A fascination that must be deeply encoded within the DNA of boys. I never went so far as to pick up snakes or large spiders, bringing them into the house to the terror of my mother as many online videos display. Instead, I would watch with wonder, focusing my attention to the Pholcidae (daddy-longlegs) and the Lampyridae (fireflies). These were my favorites, and I regretfully recall being quite cruel to them.
My interest in bugs revolved around two primary questions: Why do they exist, and how do they work?
Naturally, neither of these questions could be answered by my own research, but there was another question that intrigued me. One much more malignant. How much damage can they sustain before they give up?
I know what you’re thinking: Is this guy the next Jeffrey Dahmer? Should we be calling the authorities on him?
No, to both. While messed up in hindsight, I do not view my actions as unordinary, particularly as I was joined by friends at the time. We would catch fireflies at night and rip their abdomens out, trying to figure out how they were able to emit light in such a way. At times, we would rip at their wings, seeing if they could still fly with only one pair. Most of the time, we would catch them and contain them in jars, creating a natural lantern of sorts.
The daddy-longlegs would be handled without fear, the only “spider” my sister was unafraid to touch. (I, on the other hand, save every one found in the house from being squished by my family members. When I can, I allow them to stay in the house, unbeknownst to everyone else. After all, the outside world is rather cruel, and there are flies inside that must be taken care of anyway.) They, too, were experimented with. Their legs, one by one, would be ripped off as we questioned how much pain they could tolerate, how long it would be until they could no longer walk.
These days, I don’t experiment in such torturous ways. Nor am I as interested in bugs as I used to be. That script in my DNA must have not been embedded too deep. Nonetheless, slowing down and simply observing the hoverfly as it licked at my knee…there’s something quite nice about that.
— C