The Order Diptera

THE ORDER DIPTERA
By Doc Walton

It can be argued that Science is the pursuit of understanding Nature and that Nature, for many, is merely another way of saying God. We cannot, therefore, discount the scientific explanation offered by Dr. Derek Williams, having to do with the shifting wind currents of global climate change and the redistribution of insect populations on those currents. This may, in fact, be the case, even if to the retrospective observer the theory seems a bit wishful. Nor, however, can we rule out the Supernatural explanation that it was Martin Blackleg’s spirit summoning that created the flies in their grotesque numbers. If Nature, or God if you will, has an antithesis it is the Supernatural. Until Science can produce plausible answers for those occurrences outside the natural order of the universe, the supernatural will remain a possibility. And, in this case, tossing aside outrageous coincidence, more likely, a probability.

***

It was early autumn in Arboles, Colorado, the small mid-range mountain town to which Carrie Ann Seibel had hastily moved. It was a time when most of Arboles’ citizenry reveled in the last days of warmth and sunshine before the cold and snow of winter drove them sadly indoors or gladly to the ski slopes. For Carrie, though, this time of year meant only one thing: it was fly season.

Carrie hated bugs and if you asked her she’d tell you the little bastards hated her right back. She seemed to be perpetually scratching or picking at skin eruptions from bites and this latest one, the one on the side of her neck, was the size of a marble and oozed a liquid, sticky and yellow. Even though the wound was hidden behind her dark, Indian hair, Carrie's fingers sought out and touched the small bandage that covered it every couple of minutes. The bite was sensitive to her touch, but the searing pain each probe produced was a reminder that bugs were the enemy and should be killed whenever possible.

"Do they seem worse than ever or is it just me?" she said as she swatted a large green headed buzzer against the window glass of the country store where she worked. "I'll bet I've killed twenty of them already and I've only been out here on the porch for five minutes or so."

The man she was talking to nodded and said, "Some years are worse than others." He had just climbed down from his big wheeled pick-up, parked on the store’s dirt-packed lot, and was boot clunking up the porch stairs. He paused in front of the screen door Carrie held open for him and continued his thought, "They'll be gone soon as we get the first good frost."

"Not soon enough for me," said Carrie, snapping another fly onto the window with her free hand and enjoying for a second the gooey looking, red splotch that surrounded the smashed and deformed insect’s remains. She let out a small “yuck” and flicked the dead fly off the window with the tip of her swatter, before following the man into the store.

Following a purchased pack of Marlboro reds and five minutes of weather discussion, Carrie was back on the porch patrolling, weapon in hand. She was counting now, each time she laid waste to a fly that had the temerity to land, "Twenty-four, twenty-five." Customers were few this time of year, the non tourist, non skier time of year, but there was no shortage of flies and Carrie's kills were mounting rapidly. “Twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty.”

***

Far to the south, the residents of Volusia County, New Mexico, were experiencing a fly problem of their own. Snipe, a close relative of Deer flies, were suddenly in abundance for what was thought to be the first time ever. No one could recall their being present in such numbers and no one had an explanation for why.

Snipe and Stable Flies, both vicious biting species were causing Flagler’s cattle raising community a good deal more concern than was usual. Both fly types, like all species common to the order Diptera, are blood feeders. The Snipe has scissor like jaw parts that tear its victim’s skin and, after the rendering, spits anticoagulant saliva into the wound. It then laps up the flowing blood, bat-like, at blinding speed. The Stable fly uses its proboscis, its pointed beak, to puncture skin, human or animal, so it can suck blood through it in vampire fashion. The bites of both flies are more than just itchy and annoying; they are intensely painful.

Concern for their cattle, which were suffering from hundreds of bites and in many cases growing sickly, was the first reason that Volusia County’s ranching community considered sending for the University of New Mexico’s resident entomologist, Dr. Derek Williams. When the body of a 2000 pound prize bull was discovered so bloated from bites that it was beyond recognition, and, further, when it was impossible to tell if the bites were the cause of the death or subsequent to it, the town’s consideration found its tipping point and the call to Dr. Williams was made.

***

“These are not indigenous flies,” Williams said, holding up a jar containing a number of Snipes he had collected. “These flies are usually found in the Southeast, not the Southwest. As to why and what they are doing here,” he said, absentmindedly scratching his thinning hair, “I’ll tell you truthfully... I haven’t got a clue.”

A group of ranchers had gathered at a local church that served as a county meeting place to hear what Williams had to say. They shuffled their feet and mumbled their displeasure. “A lot of good that does us” and, “Hell, I could’ve told you that myself” were typical of the comments made. One wry old rancher pointed out to Dr. Williams that they were all slapping at flies as they talked.

“Look,” Williams went on, ignoring the sarcasm, “I’m going to take these and some other specimens from around here back to the university for analysis and see if there is anything a microscope can tell us. I’m also going to call a few people I know in Florida where these flies probably came from. See if they know something I don’t. Meanwhile, I’ve got nothing for you. All I can say is stock up on Deet and pray for an early winter. I’ll get back to you.”

***

Whether or not prayers were a factor is difficult to say. Certainly some were offered. Perhaps it was merely coincidence that a short two days after Williams departed, so did the flies. No one could truthfully say why.

***

In Arboles, Colorado, Carrie Ann Seibel now stalked her porch with a vengeance. Her prey gathered thicker than ever and her swatter was seldom still. Although she dressed in jeans and long sleeved cowgirl shirts, she had acquired a half dozen more bites. Each new wound gave fuel to her rage and the insect body count mounting on the porch rose to reflect it. Carrie was growing more and more obsessed.

***

Although the flies had returned to a normal level in Volusia County, New Mexico, one man continued to pray. His prayers, however, were not the bent kneed pleas to a Christian God for expiation and mercy; his prayers had a darker calling and were thrown into the night on liquored breath. His prayers were not pleas, but rather curses to summon retribution and exact revenge. They were hatred, bitter and evil, verbalized to make his prayers reality.

***

Martin Blackleg was an Indian and whether you called him that or a Native American didn’t matter to him because, frankly, he didn’t give a shit. He was a Southern Ute, one of the richest tribes in America. With fiscal holdings in the millions derived from land, mining, and casinos, astute money managers saw to it that all tribal members shared in the largesse. Although Blackleg was only 35, he had recently been granted a yearly endowment of forty grand from the tribe for having ruined a knee in a mining accident. This money, which he received in monthly allotments, meant to Blackleg that he didn’t HAVE to give a shit and allowed him to pursue activities about which he did give a toad’s turd, a short list that consisted of tequila, mescaline and peyote, usually taken in combination and always in quantity. These drugs, which he consumed daily, induced in Blackleg a state he liked to call mystical as he was sure that while in it, he could summon forth spirits of the dead to do his bidding. The catch was, as tribal elders told him, that his prayers had to be offered with a true and honest heart. No problem there Blackleg thought. His heart held only one honest truth and that was he honest to fucking God hated his wife. The bitch had left him and disappeared into the night six months ago. He had prayed for revenge every day since then, prayers to the spirits of buffalo, eagle and bear, but they all proved fruitless. His wife remained gone...and unpunished.

Then one night when clouds obscured the moon and made his world as dark as his heart, an almost tangible bitterness emerged from Blackleg’s drug and alcohol stupor and he quite suddenly remembered his wife’s hatred of bugs. He cursed his prayers that night not to his tribe’s traditional totems, but to the tiny spirits, smallest of all, the petty annoyances that scurry underfoot and buzz about the ear. He prayed to the spirits of insects. When the flies in their fierce density had then appeared in Volusia County, Blackleg was certain his prayers had been answered. And yet still he prayed. With fevered intensity he prayed anew to send them on their way. He prayed the flies to find his wife.

***

There is a man-made lake that runs north and south through canyons that connect Northern New Mexico to Southern Colorado. All but the northern most mile of this thirty six mile narrow body of water called Navajo Lake, lies in New Mexico. The shores of that mile, the Colorado mile, run from the water’s edge up to acres of rock, scrub pine and sagebrush. Among that scruffy southwestern landscape, lies the small hay farming and ranch community of Arboles, pronounced Ar-bo-leez by its inhabitants. It is there where you will find The Arboles Store, upon whose long front porch stalked the bug killing machine named Carrie Ann Seibel. As the flies in their millions made their way steadily north through the canyon in short bursts of flight, alighting on the shores of the lake for only momentary pauses, Carrie Anne Seibel continued her kill count.

***

There are more known species of flies than there are vertebrates. Scientists have categorized over a hundred thousand and as many as a million are suspected. All the biting species, black flies, midges, deer flies, snipe, stable, yellow flies and more, are blood feeders. They can find you by seeing your movement or scenting your perspiration. They can even find you by sensing the carbon dioxide on your exhaled breath. They are relentless in pursuit of their food and they will attack any warm blooded creature. Swarms are rare, but not unheard of. The massive gathering of the Diptera that was moving steadily north above Lake Navajo, however, could not accurately be explained as natural or in keeping with the known habits of the Order. It seemed moved on a greater force; a force as yet unknown to Science and it had what appeared to the objective observer, direction and purpose. It was moving, quite simply, with intent.

***

As Carrie Ann Seibel slapped her swatter down on a tightly bunched cluster of flies, she was vaguely aware of distant noise emanating from somewhere to the south. She paused in her grim pursuit of insect death for just a moment to glance in that direction. Although the morning was lighted elsewhere with bright sunshine, a thick, dark cloud was visible on that southern horizon, moving slowly, but inexorably in her direction. Around her, the flies were growing thicker as well, and Carrie Ann renewed her lethal efforts. She was killing too fast to count now, thinking this would surely be a record day. Fly bodies crunched in clumps littered the porch floor, but Carrie Ann was too busy to stop and sweep them away. Her swatter whizzed and snapped with deadly efficiency.

***

Who can say how many flies it would take to fill a sky and darken a day, but whatever the number, they descended on the Arboles Store with the noise of a thousand chain saws at full rev. This noise, this hideous, terrifying noise, would be the last that Carrie Ann Seibel would ever hear and she would hear it but for a second. Flies in swarm dense as dirt filled her ears, clogging her aural passages. They crowded and crawled into her nostrils and when she gasped for air, they filled her mouth by the thousands, vomiting and shitting as all flies do when they alight. They crawled down her throat and choked off her air. It took but another moment, a finger snap, an eye blink, for Carrie Ann Seibel to crash to the floor and disappear under the gathered mass of the Order Diptera. Death, however, sweet now longed for death, was much slower in coming. Long minutes passed as countless microscopic bits of flesh were torn from her body in the flies’ pursuit of the blood that flowed within.

Though screams were impossible for Carrie Ann Seibel, prayers were not. She knew the origin of her death as she lay there being ravaged and consumed on the porch of the Arboles Store. It could be nothing else but hate manifested and directed. She knew of only one person who could hate with such murderous intensity, and so it was that Carrie Ann Seibel’s silent prayers were not for life or salvation, but were instead, for revenge. She prayed to the creatures of the Order Diptera to fly from whence they came. She prayed with a will that ignored pain and defied death for longer than human reason would allow. She prayed to send the flies back to Martin Blackleg.

***

That only two human deaths were recorded during the fly infestation of that year can be attributed to luck or, as Science would have it, unhappy coincidence, but surely a closer examination of the events would have been called for had it been known the victims were related. It wasn’t until much later that Carrie Ann’s name change from Blackleg to Seibel was revealed and the connection made. By then, no one really cared. Swarm flyovers had been reported during the incident by dozens of people across the landscape from Volusia County, New Mexico to Arboles, Colorado, the roughly 150 mile round trip the flies had taken. Why none of those people were attacked constituted the principal flaw in the scientific explanation. It was, so to speak, the fly in their ointment. That Supernatural forces were at work in the deaths of Blackleg and Seibel is a theory that continues to be ignored by Science despite the evidence that such is the case being heavily in that theory’s favor. Science, that is, the community of those who are supposed to be the most open-minded of all, are often not.


Copyright Doc Walton December, 2010