One Lucky Soul: Encounter With a Drowning Fruit Fly

Monday 18 April 2016

Encounter With a Drowning Fruit Fly

Teach your children that whenever a mosquito bites them or a fly lands on their food, they are only trying to feed and survive. This is the natural order of things in Life. There is nothing personal about it and there is no reason to freak out or to curse the insects.

Since I’m currently residing in a hotel, I get to use the small pool whenever I want. Not bad for a perk.  So last week I was in the water when I see a tiny fruit fly right in the middle of the pool. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was dead or alive. A few seconds of observation and I realised that it’s still moving its extremities.

Being who I am, I used my index to lift the poor thing out of the water. I could sense its physical relief — it might have been struggling for hours. The survivor kept hanging on my finger like a distressed baby koala on its caring mama. Then it began drying itself. Apparently they, too, do this.

After some more minutes, I gently placed my finger by the border of the pool onto the solid ground. To my slight surprise, it was reluctant to leave my helping finger. Perhaps the long-awaited relief made it not want to.

In some weird way, by that time I had already developed a bond with that minuscule form of life. Actually I didn’t want to let go either.

  “Imagine having an insect for a pet,” came to mind. I mean, I’ve been ‘communicating’ with, and writing about ants, spiders, flies, and mosquitoes for a while now; I rarely ever kill an insect, I just catch and release them instead. And believe me, they do cooperate. They do want to live more than to be killed. It’s a natural instinct for survival.

That said, I hereby suggest that if you want to get rid of an insect in your house, open those doors and windows and guide them out, or catch and release them. In fact, there are simple tools now that allow you to do just that as seen in the below video. Or if you don’t want to spend, use magazines, cups, and tissues. You will feel good.

My earlier ant pieces can be found Here, Here, and There. Reviving a Drowning Bee [Video] — Learning The Do’s and Don’ts and Befriending a Flying Insect are two more.

From Befriending a Flying Insect on the same pool

Back to the pool...A few more gentle finger manoeuvrers and there was the fruit fly; safe, sound, and on the ground.  

Under my watchful eyes, I could see that the kiddo stayed where it was. It was still trying to dry itself by shaking its arms, legs, and wings — or at least that’s what appeared to me. But it looked healthy and ready to carry on living…for a few weeks. Hopefully.

 I wish I had a camera then to take a selfie together and commemorate this special moment.  Could that be the next step? Does the insect kingdom trust me enough now to welcome me in and befriend me? I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.  

The whole encounter took about 15 minutes. When I snapped out of it, shifting my vision from the micro to the macro world and looking around, I was happy that no one was watching. Just because I looked like a lunatic having a peculiar, highly emotional relationship with one of his fingers.