Fly Shot

Take a careful look at this picture.

This morning, I’m sitting at my computer in front of a beautiful crackling fireplace which is just out of sight; the right stone wall of the fireplace is visible above the yellow fly-swatter. On the little table in front of me, also just out of sight, is my laptop, my coffee, my wallet and the TV remote. Lying near my right hip on this big couch is the trusty yellow fly-swatter which I had used yesterday in a brief, but quite successful, campaign against a small squadron of flies. (I had left a window open and it was a really warm October day. Whoops.) I’d forgotten about the fly-swatter so far this morning, though, because I pretty much ‘got ’em all’ yesterday afternoon and hadn’t seen any since.

A big fly suddenly jinked his way into my vision and landed in plain site on the left side of my coffee cup. I had a jolt of many thoughts at once—you know how they say things slow down during moments of great crisis like this. My coffee mocha! I had lovingly made SwissMiss Cocoa and mixed it with coffee and added just the right amount of Half & Half to make a hot deluxe mocha. Yummers!

But then there were all these other thoughts. . . “But what are the odds the fly-swatter would be resting by my right hand at this moment!? And it’s a brutally clear shot—the key will be immediacy— yesterday’s flies were jumpy and quick—and also there won’t be any need for stalking. He is already easily within the maximum effective range of my weapon by happenstance of his landing so close. I won’t even have to get up.” Remember, all of this in a split second. “And this might be the last outlier from yesterday’s heroic battles— the last Japanese out of the caves in the Philippines. Maybe we can all have closure if I kill him.” Alright. I’m pushing it here.

There must have been some quick algorithm that played out in my head but all I remember is the violence of the rocket shot that nailed the cup of coffee and sent it straight away like a line drive. I sat there and looked about me, in shock, the way someone staggers about the highway after crawling out of a car wreck.

To my delight, there was the dead fly—see in the picture just to the left of the foremost table leg and up a bit; you can see it on the floor between the darker brown knotholes in the planks and actually also within a small constellation of reflection spots in the camera shot. These may be reflections of light off of some of the big coffee drops on the floor? Anyway, there he is for sure if you zoom in—the enemy slain on the field of battle, tilted on his side like a little ship grounded softly ashore a beach. Sad it is. I am also aware, however, of the nobility of the fly in the photo, as it sallied forth for his people in a desperate bid for supremacy, and a possible sip of coffee. He has his place in history.

I ponder Emily Dickenson’s Success Is Counted Sweetest: . . . Not one of all the purple host / Who took the flag today / Can tell the definition / So clear of victory / As he defeated dying / On whose forbidden ear / The distant strains of triumph / Burst, agonized and clear! /

Defeat is a heavy burden to bear, my poor friend, but, because of that, so is Victory.

Speaking of coffee reflections, you can see the coffee/mocha spatter in a wide path directly away from me, through the dead-fly-zone, and to the coffee cup resting on the floor at the far end of the shot. Alas, my delicious mocha! You can see what’s left of it laying in the coffee cup like dirty water resting in a culvert pipe.

So. I took a quick picture and cleaned up the floor and wrote this down.

“Nice shot Kevin. But that’s not what adults do.”

I know.

Sorry.