I was born at 6:17 yesterday morning in the kitchen of Hans Casteels, although “born” makes the event sound considerably more dignified than it was. I emerged from somewhere near a bowl of peaches, immediately flew into a cupboard door, recovered, and by 6:19 had discovered a banana. This, I gather, is adulthood.
Being a fruit fly means living with a certain urgency. Humans spend decades wondering what they should do with their lives. We get perhaps thirty days, considerably fewer if Hans notices us, and therefore tend to concentrate on the essentials: eat, reproduce, irritate the large mammals, and avoid drowning in French wine. It is not a complicated philosophy, but neither is Buddhism once you remove the gift shop.
Hans’s kitchen is an unusually attractive place to be a fruit fly because he insists on buying actual food. There are peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, raspberries, bananas and various other things that ripen on countertops because apparently refrigerators have offended him personally. Somewhere there is usually an onion. Nobody quite knows what we are supposed to do with an onion, but every family has an uncle with strange interests and ours is Uncle Maurice, who will spend six hours sitting on one while insisting there are “interesting notes underneath the skin.”
Then there is Isabel. Isabel is approximately the size of Belgium and still growing. From our perspective, she is not a dog. She is weather. You can be sitting peacefully on a raspberry when suddenly the sun disappears, the room fills with Newfoundland, and an enormous wet black nose descends from the heavens. There is no warning. One moment you are having breakfast and the next you are inside Isabel’s nostril reconsidering every decision you have made since 6:17. She is also responsible for an astonishing amount of food appearing briefly on the floor. This makes her both our greatest natural predator and our primary agricultural subsidy. Humans have governments. We have Isabel.
By late morning, the household is awake and Hans has begun the daily campaign against us. I find this personally offensive because the man spends considerable time writing about mortality and then becomes remarkably enthusiastic about ours. He swats. He claps. He waves dish towels. He performs sudden movements that would concern a neurologist if anyone else his age did them. We evade. Fruit flies have excellent reflexes. This is necessary because evolution apparently looked at us and said, “You may live for a month, but I will at least make you extremely difficult to slap.”
Then somebody puts out the glass. The glass is legendary. Every fruit fly family in the house knows about it. Parents warn their children. Survivors speak of it in hushed tones behind the toaster. Sancerre.
The humans apparently believe this is a trap. We consider it assisted dying. You are flying around a Canadian kitchen, knowing that your entire lifespan will barely survive a Costco sale, and suddenly somebody offers you a swimming pool filled with chilled Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire Valley. There are worse exits. My brother Philippe went in last Tuesday. He circled twice, landed on the rim, took what appeared to be a contemplative sip and then dove straight in. No hesitation. No note. Just Sancerre. He died at approximately 4:23 in the afternoon with a look on his face suggesting that, under the circumstances, he had beaten the system.
By dinner there may be six or seven of us floating in there. Humans look at this and see pest control. We see the Hôtel du Cap. And then came the Tavel Incident. This will be discussed in fruit fly circles for generations, which admittedly means until Thursday.
One afternoon Hans apparently decided that sacrificing Sancerre to insects was becoming financially irresponsible. A reasonable conclusion, particularly when your enemies weigh approximately one milligram and have never contributed toward the mortgage. So the Sancerre disappeared. In its place appeared Tavel. Rosé. We gathered. We inspected. We circled. Nobody went in. Not one. For an entire day.
Hans stared at the glass. We stared at Hans. He moved it closer to the fruit. Nothing. He moved it to another part of the kitchen. Nothing. At one point I landed directly beside the glass, looked into it and flew away. There are limits.
This should settle, once and for all, the question of whether fruit flies possess taste. We may eat fermenting banana sludge and spend recreational time on onions, but apparently even we have standards. The Sancerre returned. Within hours there were bodies.
Which is tragic, certainly, but also rather beautiful in its way. Humans spend enormous amounts of money attempting to determine whether animals can make sophisticated choices. Scientists construct mazes. They dispense pellets. They publish papers. Hans conducted the experiment for about fourteen dollars. Given the choice between living another three weeks and drowning in Tavel, we chose life. Given Sancerre, we reconsidered.
By evening, Isabel is asleep, stretched across the floor like a collapsed bridge. The fruit bowl has been inspected. The onion continues to attract Uncle Maurice for reasons nobody intends to investigate. Hans is sitting somewhere with a glass of wine that, rather selfishly, he intends to drink himself. I hover near the ceiling and contemplate my existence.
Tomorrow I may be dead. Possibly by dish towel. Possibly by Isabel. Possibly because I misjudge the Sancerre. That is the thing about having a lifespan measured in weeks. You do not have much opportunity to postpone things. There is no retirement planning. No five year strategy. No waiting until Tuesday. No saving the good bottle for a special occasion. The special occasion is that you are alive at 7:42.
Perhaps humans could learn something from us. Probably not. They have been around for three hundred thousand years and still need instructions on shampoo bottles.
But should I make it to tomorrow morning, I know exactly what I will do. I will visit the peaches. I will check on the banana. I will avoid Isabel’s nose. I will listen to Uncle Maurice explain the onion again. And sometime around four, when Hans puts out that little glass of pale golden Sancerre, I may fly over and sit on the rim. Just for a taste.
After all, nobody lives forever. But Tavel? I’m not fucking suicidal.
If I May… Speaking of very small creatures trying to make it through their first days, there are babies in the NICU who arrived considerably earlier than planned and without even the consolation of a ripe peach or a glass of Sancerre. My daughter Ashley is a NICU nurse, and I write these ridiculous little essays partly because laughter keeps the machinery upstairs running, but also because we are raising money to help her hospital buy two desperately needed bassinets, at roughly $30,000 each. I don’t charge for anything I write. If something here made you laugh, snort coffee through your nose, or briefly reconsider the moral character of a fruit fly, consider tossing a few dollars toward the NICU. Fruit flies get about thirty days and immediately head for the wine. These tiny humans are fighting for considerably more time, and they deserve every piece of equipment we can put around them.
If you are able, the donation link is below. Every contribution, no matter the size, helps give a newborn the chance to grow up and one day argue about something much more sensible.
The essays will remain free. The bassinets, unfortunately, are not.
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