The Case for Flies

Fruit flies get a bad rap. There are many different kinds of fruit flies with many different names, but for our purposes let us consider Drosophila melanogaster, which is not only common everywhere but also one of the most popular and useful test organisms for biological research, due to its quick life cycle (50 days from egg to dead), prodigious reproduction (400 eggs per brood), and simple genetics (a mere four pairs of chromosomes).

These are small flies, just a couple millimeters long, looking almost like gnats at first glance. They’re attracted to rotting organic matter like fruits and some vegetables, both as food and as a medium for laying eggs. They suck up juice and rotten goop through non-biting mouth parts. While adult flies can sneak into homes, restaurants, and grocery stores, they also sometimes just ride in as eggs already laid into an odd piece of produce with a little damage or bruising. Kitchen composters often complain about fruit flies infesting their countertop compost pods and thence their nominally unspoiled produce. And of course the flies always find rotting produce in outdoor compost, especially if it’s particularly wet or has more greens than browns.

This is good actually! Fruit flies play a big part in breaking down produce as first responders in the composting process. They eat up that junk in proportionally great quantities both as adults and larvae, turning parts of it into rich, agriculturally nutritious fly poop. Whenever I open up my compost bin in warmer months, there’s invariably a little cloud of startled flies puffing up in alarm. They’re quite small and they don’t bite, so they’re completely harmless. They are of course quite dirty as plant carrion eaters, so they can theoretically cause illness in the allergic through too much contact, or if you consume produce containing their eggs or live flies. Don’t be eating flies, generally.

Some composters use fly infestations as a signal their compost needs more browns, which as I’ve said is beyond my level of micromanagement. To me, the presence of fruit flies says the compost is working, though greenly. Plus I like that the flies in turn attract predators like spiders and other critters who visibly take up residence in the compost bin, turning it into a little universe all its own. Maybe it smells a bit ripe at the peak of summer, but my composter is in a far corner of the yard so it doesn’t bother anyone but the chipmunks who nest out there, and they’ve not yet spoken to me about it.

By spring, when the compost bin has been filled and shut for a few months, it’s all calmed down and decayed to dark dirt. No flies or much of anything else besides worms and other tiny soil life. So many fruit flies will have lived and bred and died over the year that the composter will be a distant generational memory for them, like Valhalla. Fortunately there’s a new Valhalla starting up adjacent in composter number two.

Every time we have a big election, I’m reminded of Lyle Lovett’s “Election Day,” a jaunty roadhouse-country number with a particularly blazing piano and very Lovett-esque quirky narrative: a man pleads with a cop not to confiscate his drug stash ahead of Election Day.

It’s a fun song. I always thought it was a little odd for Lovett to directly mention drugs, since usually he’s more about lonesome lovin’ and ridin’ ponies and of course drankin’ now and again. But he never came across as a Willie Nelson style tokin’ country singer.

I learned awhile back that “Election Day” was actually written by Blaze Foley, who was definitely of that style. Foley was much beloved in Texas and particularly Austin, and he was especially beloved by artists like Lovett, not to mention Nelson as well as Merle Haggard among many others who also covered his songs.

It’s easy to see how Foley’s wry delivery and lyrics would appeal to Lovett (who also covered Foley’s “Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries”), though Foley can go a little dark and desperate in a way that Lovett approaches but rarely embraces. To say Foley had a checkered past would be an understatement, from drinking and drugs to falling in and out of destitution and having his master tapes constantly disappearing (one album lost, one album stolen, one confiscated by the DEA).

Foley was shot to death in 1989 during a dispute with a man carrying the too-perfect-for-fiction name of Carey January. But artists continue covering his songs individually and in tribute albums, and despite everything, fortunately there are lots of Foley’s studio recordings and live performances available.

Foley usually plays “Election Day” slower and lower than Lovett, and this version is a short performance, but I like the laconic pre-song patter. Who knows, after today’s election we might need some music to dance to in handcuffs.