OK. It’s another fly story. I was washing oranges, and inside one of the bags, upon a puny mottled orange, sat one small house fly.

The last time I experienced a house fly in a house, the person next to me reached over and swatted it. Bam! So, having so recently wrestled with the issue of vermin life and death, the simple solution here seemed to be to close the top of the bag, walk to the front door, and release the fly outside.

Which was a fine plan, but, being me, when the fly didn’t immediately take flight, I had to gently lift the orange and see what was up.

The fly (yes, like the rat) was very beautiful. It had an iridescent blue middle body, and bulbous eyes the color of red wine. So. I held the orange and just sat on the brick steps and watched for a while.

They say flies are dirty, they carry disease, and maybe that’s so. But this fly must have been an exception. First it used its right back leg to unkink its left. Then the two front legs were used to rub its eyes. The fly cleaned its eyes so many times, I have to believe fly eyes have a rather durable surface compared to the wet sensitive surface of human eyes. The fly also used its hind legs to polish over and over both the underside and the topside of the transparent wings. This was a fastidious fly.

At one point, the fly bent its forearms against the orange, and lifted all back four legs into a kind of yoga headstand. I have no idea what the purpose of this was, but it looked like a good stretch.

Did I say clearly enough, this was a beautiful fly, blue and maroon?

Then, so abruptly I might have missed it, hygiene was complete, fly lifted off and out of sight.

I’d probably feel differently had it been 100 flies instead of only one, but why would anyone want to kill something so small, yet so intricately fashioned, so entertaining, swift, acrobatic. And with such complex eyes.

So easy to smash a fly, so hard to build one.

Once, during meditation at the end of a class, I saw in my mind a great fly come right to my face and check me out. Ever since then, I’ve paid more attention to flies, and have yet to be bored.

If only flies could talk…