A Story About a Cluster Fly

On Sunday, October 1, 2017, 867 people were shot by over 1,000 rounds of gunfire while attending a music festival in Las Vegas. Sixty of them died. Emergency support services were overwhelmed. All available medical personnel were called in but there were not enough to care for the shocked and bleeding victims who witnessed the murder of friends, spouses and strangers while holding their own deaths at bay. It was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.

All this was done by one 64 year old guy. ONE GUY.

I was washing the dishes when the news came over the television. Did I really hear that right? How is it possible for ONE PERSON to kill so many, so fast? Who can wrap their heads around this stuff? I was looking from the outside-in at my own grief and horror. I could not hold it all.

But hold it all I did, rinsing the dishes while turning this over in my mind, and gradually becoming distracted by an annoying buzzing sound. I looked out the window in case Vermont Gas was up to something, then glanced at the television to see if Jeopardy was using the sound as one of its contestant challenges. The buzzing stopped, so I shrugged my shoulders and continued washing the last pot. But as I turned to wipe the counter down and look out of the window, it sounded again, and while the sun shot the last of its scarlet rays through the willow tree, suddenly, from behind a vase on the window sill, emerged a single cluster fly spinning around on its back, wings clamped, the black threads of its legs flailing with the effort of trying to flip itself over until it was still, exhausted. A moment passed; it buzzed again, obviously dying but also obviously not going gently into the good night.

A cluster fly, the insect everyone hates. There are a gazillion of them, zooming around and clinging to the outside of the kitchen window, trying to get inside while I washed the pots and pans, drawn to the warmth of my kitchen as Vermont turns its face toward winter. Cluster flies are everyone’s YUCK, they are pesty, dirty, disgusting, carry who knows what creepy diseases, they dance in your face, get stuck in your hair, did I say PESTY?

At any other time, I would have knocked a weakened fly into the sink and flushed it down the drain. Flies do not get the same capture and release treatment here as spiders and moths, despite some half-hearted effort to send them back from whence they came.

I was about to grab a used napkin to plunk on the struggling insect when the grief of 60 slaughtered people, over 800 injured and the anguish of an entire medical community overwhelmed me. Instead of disgust, I was suddenly sympathetic to the plight of the dying fly. Those tiny thread legs flailing on the window sill filled me with such sorrow that I reached out until its feet touched the tip of my finger. It paused. The flailing stopped as the fly seemed to register what was going on in its dimming world, and then, slowly, its legs moved and organized themselves against my skin. It stopped struggling, as if acknowledging the impossible: It had just touched an upside-down land instead of groping in the vapors. One leg moved, and then another and another, as it explored its incredible luck at finding itself a chance to survive after its ordeal behind the flower vase. I swear, as it patted the tip of my finger, it seemed to perk up, have hope, perhaps its world was not ending just yet, its life and its death were being acknowledged. I swear an energy passed between us but don’t tell anyone I shared a moment with a cluster fly. That is the stuff of Crazy.

I wept then though, for over 867 people, and one little cluster fly.