Sunday, July 25, 2010

The Circle Fly


No Photo is known to exist of this insect.



   I guess I never really gave too much thought to bugs in my life until I got to the Yukon.  Once you get out into the Yukon bush, all of a sudden the endless variety of bugs really catches your attention!  The mosquito of course is king of them all, but there must be at least a bazillion -maybe even two bazillion- other types of bugs that are obviously put on this earth to help mankind remember to exercise properly, and that a nice comfy bed is no place to be laying during those long days of summer.  Much better you should be sitting in the dense smoke of a smudge-fire or buried in mud up to your hair as the insects play their delightful serenades of buzzing wings about your ears, give you close ups of their varied and intricate body designs as they fly into your eyes, and increase your nutritional intake as you inhale them with each breath you take.
   Now, I am no entomologist by a long shot, but there is a species of fly that always fascinated me of whom I first heard of in the Cariboo region of British Columbia back in the late 1960's.  I searched for them for years with no success, until sure enough one day in 1978, I discovered one in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.  Since that day I have been able to determine through various newspaper reports,UTUBE Videos, and first hand conversations that the Circle Fly does indeed exist in various places across Canada, and no doubt all of North America. So in the spirit of helping to advance scientific knowledge on this incredibly unsociable insect, I offer the following story in which I first learned of it's existence.
   I hope you enjoy the story, and if you have any direct personal experience with this critter, feel free to leave a comment here on my site.
  Enjoy  the story!
  
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THE CIRCLE  FLY

by
 Rick Mortimer
                                      

     My dad didn't like cops.  So I knew that when Leroy McRobb showed up at the porch door of our farm house wearing his Stetson and his badge, there was going to be some fireworks.
        Leroy wasn't much of a cop really, just the local excuse for law and order around our neighborhood of quiet farms and orchards. The local women felt better if there was some kind of law around, and somehow Leroy got the job.  Well, I guess they got their wish anyway, 'cause Leroy was some kind of cop.
       But now he was standing on our porch and Dad was looking at him with that look he usually reserved for Hitch, our mule.  Or, sometimes, even  for Grandpa.  But usually he had a little more understanding in his eyes when he looked at Grandpa, because Grandpa had an excuse of sorts for doing the things he did. He'd fallen down the back stairs three years ago, when I was seven, and walloped his head.  My Dad had found him laying in a heap, and, thinking Grandpa had killed himself this time (he was always falling off the steps), dragged him inside to the couch and then went out to the wood shop in back and built the old man a nice pine box to lay him out in.  It was a beauty too, and took a piece of work to build, so when Dad came back in the house and found Grandpa sitting on the couch teasing the cat - well, he  was some ticked off.  I guess Grandpa had only been in a coma or something  'cause he was now lively as ever.  Only trouble was, although everything about him seemed to work OK, something funny  had happened to his head.  He was never quite the same after that fall, and sometimes he'd even think my mom was my grandmother, who was dead,  and he'd all of a sudden reach out and pinch her behind or jump up, throw his arms around her, and start gumming her neck.  I used to figure Grandpa must be getting pretty lonely, what with grandma being long gone; but I remember the look Dad used to give him as he'd wrestle the old guy back to the couch.  Just like he was looking at Leroy now.
     "Mr. Harding", said Leroy, "I've got to take your boy into town and charge him with disturbing the peace".
      "You do eh?"
      "Yep," says Leroy getting all puffed up like, and hooking his thumbs on his belt, "He's been fighting with the Johnson kid again, and this time Mary Johnson's laying a complaint against him, so's I've got to take your son down to the station and write him up."
     Now, my dad was a busy man what with a farm to handle, us kids to feed, and a crazy old man chasing his wife half the time, so I had the feeling he'd be putting the run on old Leroy one way or the other.  I just hadn't figured out how yet.
    I stood there, all innocent like, and waited to see what was going to happen as I watched Leroy getting himself worked up into what he thought was a display of officialdom or whatever he called it when he felt important.
 
  I also notice my dad's eyes.  They were staring over the top of Leroy's head and going in these crazy circles.
     "Anyhow, Mr. Harding", says the local protector of our rights, "the thing is, I don't like to be hauling your boy off like this, but I got no real choice.  Me being the only lawman around and all."
     My dad's eyes hadn't missed a beat, and  they were still circling Leroy's sweat stained Stetson hat.  By this time, Leroy had finally noticed them too, and  he sort of glanced up over his head, like he thought there might be something flying around him.
      "Leroy", says my dad. "You know as well as I do that my son is only ten years old, and that's what ten year old boys do.  They fight with their neighbor's kids.  So why don't we just stop all this time wasting and you go on back into town and I'll get some work done."
And all the time his eyes haven't slowed a bit from going 'round and 'round above ol' Leroy's head.
      Our local hero by now was getting nervous.  He not only didn't know what  kind of trouble he was going to have with my dad, but I could see  that those eyes doing circles over his lawman's hat had him thinking for sure something was about to dive-bomb him.
     "Now dang it , Mr. Harding, I'm just trying to do my job here", Leroy whined, "You know I've got to uphold the law around here and.....what the heck are you looking at over my head anyway?"  says Leroy, as he whips off his Stetson and takes a swat in the vicinity of his bald crown.
     Dad never even slowed his eyes down.  In fact, I swear they started going faster yet as he calmly replied, "Oh, don't worry about it any Leroy, it's only one of those circle flies."
     "Circle fly?" Hollers Leroy, now swatting furiously at thin air over his head.  "What in the heck is a circle fly?  Do they bite?  Do they sting?  What do circle flies do?  I ain't never heard of them before!  Do they hurt you much when they get you?"
      "Well", says Dad, in that voice he uses when he's talking to Mr. James, the preacher in town,  "If you spent more time outside doing some honest work, instead of hiding in that office of yours, or riding around in that air conditioned car the taxpayer's bought you,  then you'd know what they are.  But you don't need to be too concerned about circle flies, Leroy.  Mostly they just fly around the back end of old Hitch, and don't do a darn thing."
      Now, as I've said, Leroy might have been a bit dense. But he wasn't dumb.  He just kind of looked at Dad,  and with a sort of sad voice said, "Mr. Harding."  "Are you calling me a horses ass?"
     "Why Leroy!", says dad, with a look of utmost piety.  "Of course not.  I'd never call an officer of the law a horses ass!"
       Leroy started to look a bit relieved.
     "But, on the other hand", Dad continued,  "It  sure as heck is hard to fool one of them circle flies!"
     

  
                              








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