I don’t remember specifics, in terms of my distant, pre-Kindergarten childhood. I do remember, however, a toy. It was one of those odd children’s toys intended to…well…do whatever child-operated children’s toys did in the early 1970s. I remember it was probably manufactured by Playskool and it was an improbable thing (in retrospect.) It was an egg with a windshield. It was an egg with wheels. It was an egg that was a car, or a car that was an egg, and if I’m not mistaken (and I probably am) it was intended to be driven by a goat wearing a farmer’s blue denim (okay, blue plastic) overalls. I remember that egg-car quite simply because I never used it for anything, except—maybe—the precursor to something science fictional. It languished, undriven by a Farmer Goat, until somewhere well within my post-Kindergarten days. I suspect that I was about 6 at the time. A fly had made its way into my room and I was intent on catching it. I was interested, if I remember, correctly, in keeping it as a pet. Yes, even in the dim, distant days of my childhood, I was interested in insects; they were—after all—far more interesting than neighborhood kids, all of whom were obsessed with being athletic and playing the human version of fetch. I found it amusing that humans and dogs shared so much in common: throw something and they chase it. Anyway, since flies aren’t (and weren’t) in the habit of playing fetch, I was inordinately interested in them. To make a long story short: I caught the fly. Actually, I baited it into the egg car and closed the windshield. I left a piece of hamburger meat inside (remnants of something scavenged from behind the Burger King at the end of the block.) It was, as I’d planned, food for my pet. What I hadn’t anticipated was that my pet fly wasn’t interested in eating. My pet fly was heavy with eggs, and she was more interested in feeding her babies. I spent quite a long time watching her depositing eggs, in a rather dainty manner, and I watched them hatch (they all hatched moments after plopping out of her delicate, dainty, ovipositor. By nightfall, I had one pet fly and a dozen or so voracious maggots. They didn’t live very long. But that’s another story. To this day, I have a fondness for flies of the metallic green variety, green-bottle flies…voracious, surly, winged garbage pirates. I don’t catch them, any more: or rather, I don’t admit to catching (and breeding) them: for…er…um…photographic and scientific purposes. The ones I won’t admit to catching are never kept for very long: indeed, they’re often released, as I’m not quite in a situation in which it would be wise to induce insect sleep by placing them (in containment) in the refrigerator for scant minutes. Because of this, the flies I often release the flies that I manage to catch (with proper eye-hand coordination, and adequate shadows, they’re easily captured. Top fly-flight speed is only about 1 – 2 miles per hours.) Because of this odd behavioral trait, I’ve discovered, it’s fairly easy to photograph flies. I captured this lovely green-bottle fly at the end of last summer. As the day was a chilly one, the model in question was rather torpid. This is the best shot of her that I got, and yes…she is most definitely female…and yes…even in torpor, she laid fast-hatching eggs on a piece of something scavenged from the dumpsters far below the horizon line of this photograph. Funny how things work…as a child I scavenged for things to feed to my scavenger pets, and as an adult, I found myself repeated particular acts for the benefit of photographic subjects of the same scavenger breed. There’s something intrinsically right about that. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.