There has been an epidemic of flies around my house. What used to be my favorite thing to do, sit in my backyard and sun bathe while reading a book, is no longer something I am able to do peacefully. Flies flock to me as if I had some kind of magnetic appeal. They crawl around on my chest, my neck and a few have found their way into my various orifices. So last week I had enough. I bought a fly trap. As much as I try to abstain from killing any other species I figured the world could do with a few less flies. What was the big deal? I mean they don’t think and feel, right? I hung the fly trap up in my backyard, which looked like a plastic iv bag filled with brown-ish water. I used one of my shoe laces to hang it.
After a week of hanging in my backyard the fly trap became a fowl sewer of fly corpses. The smell was putrid and noxious, almost too much for the human nose to ingest. So today my wife made me take it down. Inside worm like insects were beginning to grow out from the more than twenty thousand fly corpses that were contained in the plastic bag (I know the number of flies in the bag only because the fly trap was filled to the rim with dead flies and on the front of the fly trap it says that it catches over 20,000 flies). I put on plastic gloves, wore a mask over my nose and used a scissors to cut the fly trap down. Once I had it in my hands I walked it over to the trash can. As I was walking I could not help but look at the massive amount of flies that were deceased inside. A few flies were still alive but soon they would be dead as well. I was reminded of the holocaust and as quickly as the association came into my mind- the fly trap disappeared into the trash can.
I took off my gloves and the mask. I put the scissors back in its rightful place and then went and sat in the wood chair in my backyard. I watched as a few flies landed on my arm and a few more hovered around some of my dogs excrement that I was yet to pick up (my wife has been giving me a hard time about not picking up the dog excrement on a daily basis, since I promised her that I would when we got the dog). As I was staring at the flies I wondered if I would be entered into the fly history books for all the flies that I was responsible for killing in my backyard? Would flies that are yet to be born one day view me in the same way that I view Hitler? A chill ran up my spine and I was suddenly aware of what I had done. What started out as a simple act may cause me to be known in the fly world as a genocidal maniac. I have always wanted to be remembered for my writings or doing something of value in my life- but now I may be remembered as a man who murdered thousands of flies in a fly trap! I took a deep breath and stopped my mind from entertaining this horrible thought. I got up, cleaned the dog poop and then went inside.
ABSURdISTRY. 