In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.
~Lisel Mueller “Immortality” from Alive Together

Time’s fun when you’re having flies.
~Kermit the Frog

Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like a banana.
~attributed to Groucho Marx

…the tiny haunting eyes of the fruit flies, and the swooping melody of their Latin name: Drosophila melanogaster, which translates poetically as “dark-bellied dew sipper.”
~Diane Ackerman from “Fruit Flies and Love”

It’s not easy being green unless you also have a dorsal brown stripe and live in a box of ripe pears on the porch that has become a metropolis of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). 

Then you are in frog heaven with breakfast, lunch and dinner within reach of your tongue any time.

And Drosophila happily move in to the kitchen in the fall when pears, tomatoes, and apples are brought inside for preserving. Clouds of Drosophila are just part of my kitchen ambiance this time of year. Visitors are used to this; it’s like having a hundred little dark floaters in your vision.

At least these can be waved away.

The apple cider vinegar killing fields I’ve set up on the kitchen counter are capturing hundreds daily, but their robust reproducing (which I carefully studied in undergraduate biology lab) outstrips the effectiveness of my coffee filter funnel death trap lures.

Fruit fly season too shall pass. The New York Times had an amazing article today entitled “After a Decade, Scientists Unveil Fruit Fly Brain in Stunning Detail.” My goodness! Inside that little head with the big eyes is a brain of sheer beauty. I still don’t adore my bountiful greedy little Drosophila interlopers, but I can appreciate their Maker’s design. They are most effective little creatures with a sipping proboscis.

Time’s fun when you’re having flies. It must have been even more fun making the brains of flies like Drosophila.