The Fly

Just incase I was giving you the impression that Indonesia was a land occupied purely by exotic bugs like preying mantis, blue dragonflies, monster wasps and spiders to die for, I thought that I would blip something a bit more mundane today.

I had returned to the grove to try for a butterfly, but I did not have the time to sit around for long today and they were not playing nice. This fly landed on a leaf at eye level, which was a nice change from all the butterfly crouching that I had been doing. Surprisingly, it let me get very close and I was able to take a lot of shots.

I took some ant shots, but they were just not that impressive. The ants certainly were though, I followed their continuous crowded trail for thirty feet. Still no snakes or spiders, so I will perhaps return tomorrow.

I processed the fly and it looked good, only a bit small, even at actual size. This was not good enough, seeing as you do not have the facility to zoom in on my blips as yet. I solved the problem by doubling the pixel density. Cheating, maybe, but I wanted you to appreciate the detail of the fly. The result was maybe a bit woolly, but still defined enough.

The story - Remembering back to my school days, we all had to give a five minute speech on a subject of our own choice. For the mock exams, I gave this great speech on how to build a fishing rod. Clearly I was the only one in the room who thought that it was great, yawn! My friend's speech was on his pet rabbit and he took the rabbit in as a display exhibit, stretching the rules but it was permitted. No one listened to his terrible mumbling speech, but he got top marks. What a travesty of justice.

Learning from this experience, I did my final exam speech on how to breed maggots for fishing. People were naturally disgusted, but I had their interest. After a couple of minutes, the novelty of my subject started to wear off and my audience started fidgeting. At that point, I pulled a small jar from my pocket, removed the lid and slammed the jar onto the desk to empty out half a dozen different types of maggot. I continued my speech as the maggots started to radiate outwards towards the edge of the table. Clearly I had everyone's attention back again. Top marks, thanks to the rabbit.

Hope you liked the fly. I will try to find something a bit more impressive tomorrow, but we all know that blipping rarely works like that.

Dave