Life Chooses to Live

I had been aggravated by some houseflies recently, and just today saw two or three fruit flies hovering above my over-ripened bananas. I'd had enough, so I found some fly paper in a drawer and hung it from the ceiling. One of the houseflies caught my eye, though, so I picked up the paper and chased it around the house until one of its wings got caught. I then put it back near the bananas to try to get the fruit flies.

When I got back from the dentist around lunch, the housefly had worked itself free from the paper, leaving its wing behind. It obviously couldn't fly, though, and I found it moving fairly slowly on the counter. Once again I stuck it to the paper, this time by a couple of its legs. Upon arriving home, however, I noticed that the fly had freed itself a second time. It was in substantially worse shape, though, because it was missing one of its legs and it looked like two or three of the remaining five were stuck together from the glue. Still, I watched for five solid minutes as it repeatedly tried to right itself on its front limbs. It didn't succeed, but it wasn't for a lack of effort.

Once a housefly reaches its adult stage, it can be expected to die within a week, and in researching its lifespan I learned that if all the descendants of a pair of houseflies which mated in late April survived through August the surface of the Earth would be covered with flies to a depth of at least 25 feet. Given the short amount of time the fly had left, and the realization that more will easily fill the void from its passing, I didn't feel remorseful for significantly shortening this particular fly's life. However, I was in awe of the things that something like a housefly will do to survive, and the amount of persistence it had to keep trying to improve its situation when an external observer could plainly see that there was little hope of doing so. I suppose the lesson I learned is that, although fighting for survival is ultimately a losing battle, even the small among us will never quit.