genetic plaything

 

today a leg sticks out of my head

tomorrow i have wrinkled wings

i am: drosophila melanogaster

 

(by neal evenhuis)

 

flies that cannot swim

 

to the fly laying at the bottom of my pan trap

why were you attracted to yellow

when there is no yellow in the rainforest

 

(by neal evenhuis)

he can’t wear long pants

 

Campsicnemus magius

has incredibly complex worm-like processes on his legs

yet he somehow does not trip over himself

 

(by neal evenhuis)

to a house fly

 

always landing where it shouldn’t

flying around my head or lamp

sometimes a dark spot on my wall

 

(by anna solecki)

tree huggers

 

some supposedly rare flies spend their lives

running up and down trees

to collect lots of them you just have to embrace the trunk

 

diversity

 

flies

why . . .

are there so many of you?

 

(by anna solecki)

 

sleeping chironomid

 

seventeen years in dry dirt, desiccated and unmoving

a few drops of water

the larvae of Polypedilum vanderplanki awaken

 

(by chris borkent)

 

the agony of choice

 

the mosquito’s high-pitched whine, or the deer fly’s low drone

or the silent bloodletting of black flies or biting midges

what’s your favorite biting fly?

 

unfortunate names

 

a tiny fly called Pseudopachychaeta approximatonervis (Zetterstedt)

too long for my tiny identification label

would it have killed them to find a shorter name?