Spring. When the world comes back to life, flowers bloom, warm sun hits your face and clouds of tiny pointless flies hang around in groups and get right in your face.
Some biologists have postulated that sea sponges are one
organism while others suggest that they are in fact a bunch of unicellular
organisms that are lonely and have decided to hang around each other for their
entire life. It’s an interesting theory supported
by the fact that if you put one in a blender it will merge again in exactly the
same configuration [I'm not sure if that's true actually but it seems plausible].
Perhaps Midges have adopted the same concept as sponges. You’ll generally find a cloud of them,
buzzing around each other, hovering mouth-height above country paths and the like; generally getting in the way and doing nothing of note. Are they actually individual Midges or are they in fact
one large Midge with the soul purpose of getting in jogger’s mouths?
I once ran into the middle of a cloud of midges,
hacking my hands through it like a deranged Kung-Fu master for a good five
minutes, yet when I stopped and stepped to the side, the cloud reformed with the
exact same configuration of Midges.
Some Midges, yesterday.
Just as you
or I would cross the road should we see a group of undesirables hanging around
outside the local corner shop, flies change direction when they encounter the Midge
cloud. It can be so humiliating for
gnats as they bumble past having to put up with the abuse those Midges throw
at them. Physically, the gnat is no
match for the Midge cloud. Midges are
so tiny, they can play chicken with spider webs. The most daring of the group can overthrow
the leader by flying through the centre hole of a spider web without being
tangled. Perhaps they have the ‘Midge
book of records’ where such feats of daring have been documented?
No one has seen a Midgie eat (apart from weird scientists with nothing better to do and a massive microscope).
More to the point, no one has seen them sleep.
Are they flies like you and I know them?
Bluebottles are big and scary but at least we know what they are and
what they get up to. They tend to live
on window sills, usually on their backs buzzing convulsively for four seconds
every ten seconds. They also have the
unfortunate disability of not being able to see glass although they are drawn
towards it magnetically. Even when you
open a window for a Bluebottle, it will continue to head-butt the glass until
you coax it out with a rolled up newspaper.
"What are these 'windows' of which you speak?"
Flies have
featured in many horror films such as ‘The Amityville Horror’ and ‘The
Fly’. They have this sinister air about
them, possibly something to do with the fact they throw up on their food before
they eat it – yet there are not many films that feature people who have just
bought a kebab after drinking twenty pints.
Midges have been underused in films in my opinion. Surely George A. Romero can’t be far away
from ‘Land of the Midges’ or ‘Planet of the horror midges from hell’ in which
endless clouds of tiny flies end up in the mouths of everyone competing at the
Olympics.
