Man VS Wild

Friday – 08.06.21

Tonight, after I turned out the bedside lamp and closed my eyes to prepare for sleep, I heard a loud, sporadic buzzing near my head that frightened me. I jumped out of bed and turned the lamp back on, exclaiming “What the fuck was that?” to the empty room.

I looked around but saw nothing amiss, so I climbed back into bed and closed my eyes, this time leaving the lamp on in case it was keeping whatever was buzzing at bay. But again, I heard the frightening noise, and again I jumped out of bed, now a little irritated. I turned the ceiling light on and when I looked around, I saw a large, black fly buzzing by the window.

I’ve never been very good with bugs. I remember going to the Philippines as a child and seeing cockroaches fly across small rooms, and spiders on the wall as big as my hand. I wonder now how I managed to survive it. I must’ve been braver then, or maybe children are just more adaptable.

Tonight, I see the fly, and with no one else around, I know I must muster up the courage to take care of it on my own. I rile myself up and tell myself I can do it. I somehow make myself feel strong and capable. Determined, I grab the broomstick from the kitchen, and after eyeballing the distance, I lift it above my head and swoop down for the kill.

I hit it, but don’t kill it, and I watch as it flies in zig-zags across the room while I swipe at the air in a series of near misses. It flies into the light fixture up on the ceiling and then I hear the buzzing stop. I turn the ceiling light off, wondering if it will fly away without the light to attract it, but it doesn’t make a sound. I listen for a couple more minutes and hear no noise.

Suddenly sleepy, I lie back in bed and the new calm seems to give me a sense of perspective. I wonder if the fly is lonely, and I feel guilty for trying to kill a harmless creature that’s simply trying to live its small life in peace.

I wonder about the lifespan of this specific fly. I remember hearing somewhere that some flies are born and live for a single day – maybe even for only a few hours – before dying. I can’t remember where I heard that from and I wonder if I made it up or if it’s common knowledge. And I wonder if, in that single day, the fly is able to go through the whole spectrum of emotion and experience that we might go through in our lifetimes. I wonder what the equivalent for a fly might be - to see the sun set and be completely unaware it could ever rise again.

I guess things can’t be measured and compared like that – life scaled up and down, compressed and expanded. Not everything is relative. The life of a fly must be completely different from the life of a human. Apples and oranges. Everything just bananas. But doesn’t it deserve to experience whatever it can without me cutting it all short?

I feel a newfound sense of generosity and altruism. Maybe the fly has found a home in the light fixture and won’t disturb me anymore. Maybe I can let it live.

But almost as soon as I think that happy thought, I hear the buzz again, and I watch by the lamplight as the fly moves from the fixture to a high corner of the wall.

Some of the generosity lingers and I think about letting it live anyway. But then I imagine it crawling all over my face while I sleep, or waking me up with its incessant buzzing, and I know that it’s either it or me – my room isn’t big enough for the both of us.

I grab the broom again, and this time I know this is the end. I strike down with a clang so loud I worry it startled my upstairs neighbours, and I see the fly’s tiny body fall quickly to the ground. It falls somewhere behind my desk, but I can’t tell exactly where, and I spend the next 20 minutes rearranging that part of my room and trying to find it to no avail. I consider the possibility that it survived, but I haven’t heard the buzzing since.

I don’t like the idea of its corpse casually lying around. I wonder what will happen to it if it’s left undisturbed. Will it just shrivel up and stay there forever? Will it eventually break apart and turn to dust? Someone once told me that dust is partially made of people’s dead skin, so maybe it’ll be kind of like that. Or maybe I made that up too.  

Part of me is worried I’ll find the corpse one day when I least expect it, maybe while I’m trying to find something I’ve dropped on the floor, or maybe while I’m doing some much-needed cleaning. Whenever it is, I’m certain it’ll scare me and gross me out.

Hopefully, if I do ever stumble upon it again, I’ll remember how it made me feel generous and brave, even if only for a little while, and how it made me think about life and dust. Knowing me though, I won’t remember any of this at all, and I’ll reluctantly gather it up and throw it in the trash without so much as a second thought.