#green flies

[syringavulgaris]

Mahmoud Darwish, Green Flies

[alavenderleaf]

ألمشهد هُوَ هُو. صيفٌ وعَرَقٌ , وخيال يعجز عن رؤية ما وراء الأفق . واليوم أفضلُ من الغد . لكنَّ القتلى هم الذين يتجدّدون . يُولَدُون كُلَّ يوم . وحين يحاولون النوم يأخذهم القتلُ من نعاسهم إلى نومٍ بلا أحلام . لا قيمة للعدد . ولا أَحد يطلب عوناً من أحد. أصوات تبحث عن كلمات في البرية ، فيعود الصدى واضحاً جارحاً : لا أَحد . لكن ثمَّـةَ من يقول: ((من حق القاتل أن يدافع عن غريزة القتل . أمَّا القتلى فيقولون متأخرين : من حق الضحية أن تدافع عن حَـقِّها في الصراخ)) . يعلو الأذان صاعداً من وقت الصلاة إلي جنازات متشابهة : توابيتُ مرفوعةٌ على عجل ، تدفن علي عجل... إذ لا وقت لإكمال الطقوس ، فإنَّ قتلي آخرين قادمون ، مسرعين ، من غاراتٍ أخرى . قادمون فُرَادي أو جماعات... أو عائلةً واحدةً لا تترك وراءها أيتاماً وثكالي . السماء رماديَّةٌ رصاصية ، والبحر رماديٌّ أزرق . أَمَّا لون الدم فقد حَجَبَتْهُ عن الكاميرا أَسرابٌ من ذباب أَخضر !

The scene is one without question. Summer and sweat, and an imagination  that fails to see what's behind the horizon. And today  is better than tomorrow. But the murdered are the ones  renewed. They are reborn every day. And when they try  to sleep the murder takes them from their drowsiness to a slumber  with no dreams. No value to numbers. And no one  asking help from anyone. Voices looking for  words in the wild, and the echo returns clear and  acrid: no one. Then there’s who says:  ((The killer has a right to defend the instinct  to kill. While the murdered say, delayed:  the victim has a right to defend its right to  scream)). The call to prayer sounds, raising the time  for prayer to similar funerals: coffins  raised in a hurry, buried in a hurry… as there is no  time to complete the rituals, more dead are  coming, hurried, from other raids. Coming  singular or grouped… or a whole family, leaving behind no  orphans or bereaved mothers. The sky is grey,  leadlike, and the sea is grey blue. And the color of  blood have been hidden from the camera by herds of  green flies!

Green Flies, poem by Mahmoud Darwish (x)

[saigobe]

“Birds are the eyes of heaven, and flies are the spies of hell.”

“Birds are the eyes of heaven, and flies are the spies of hell.”

About a month ago my friend’s house was infiltrated by flies, large, noisy flies. She sat armed and ready to smack any fly which got close. I helped by doing reconnaissance. Neither of us could figure out where the flies had come from. Well, the flies have moved. I am now suffering through the first plague of South Dennis. The flies, big, ugly flies with green bodies are all over the house, at…

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[irossmary]

Cows Fighting Back Against Flies

The image of the docile cow getting covered in flies while she chews the grass or the cud very slowly and calmly is one that most people have of the cow.

However, the reality can be a lot different and researchers at Florida State University have been finding that the aggressive streak in cows is more and more common. Why that should be is another matter entirely and one which these researchers aren’t too interested in answering just yet.

“We conducted studies on herds of dairy cows on 50 ranches across Florida over a ten-year period,” says Sismic Culluck of the bovine division of the Animal Behavioral Studies Department at the Tampa college. “It was a very comprehensive and lengthy study and we were quite surprised at the results.”

Taking samples of what he terms “anger hormones” in the cows, Culluck and his team found that during the ten-year period covered, cows of all ages experienced a 38% rise in the prevalence of this aggressive strain in their blood.

One of the more interesting corollaries from this test showed that they were having less medical complications from flies at the same time.

The researchers insist that they cannot be certain that the two sets of findings are even related. The presence of the hormone could be, they say, attributed to a change in feeding patterns or in the ingredients of formula feed. It does correspond with a period during which farmers had become more and more dependent on formulated feed for their animals rather than using more natural foods.

Or it could be that the formula feed has something in it that acts as a fly repellent through the skin and that that is causing the reduction in fly problems for the increasingly cranky animals.

What many farmers believe, however, is that more and more cows are simply evolving with the increase in flies around the farms and are fighting back.

“It’s certainly both an interesting and a plausible theory,” says Dr. Culluck. “Nature has a way of fighting back in a whole host of domains and manners that really leave you wondering if we aren’t all just puppets whose strings are being controlled by something else.”

That’s certainly food for thought, all right – especially if you believe in a greater being. At the same time, it has to be said that Florida has embraced the whole concept of fly control through organic means. Sales of packs of fly predators have increase exponentially in the Sunshine State over the past five years as farmers push forward with all kinds of green solutions to get rid of flies. The focus on getting rid of flies and the banning of a lengthening list of chemicals means that green flies are now down while the sales of homemade fly trap kits are up.