Revivifly

Originally featured in The Salty Fish Bowl - April 2010

Recent Runaway Ruminations on the subject of Time and its Relative discrepancies seem fitting now, given the chronological connotation of the current issue of our beloved Bowl. Simply put, time flies, and already a year has gone by since the Bowl began to run. To Steph and Gen, congratulations on a rag well done, and here’s to another year of irreverence and literacy laced incoherence. Excelsior!

I’d like to be serious now if I may, for there is something weighing heavily on my mind. Where does one get 28 pounds each of sulphur and iron filings (separate if you please)? Free tickets to a most dramatic experiment are on offer for anybody who can help me procure these provisions.


How To Revivify A Drowned Fly

Have you ever filled a sink full of dishes and promptly fallen asleep on the couch in a quesadilla coma, discovering upon awakening a hapless fly dead by drowning in your dishwater? I don’t know about you, but I always feel bad if I kill an animal…by accident. Well if you choose to read on, the next time you find yourself in this position you’ll have a way out of potential eternal damnation for dispatching one of God’s creatures, though you may bring on similar damnation for heresy and/or alchemy and the like.

To practice at home, here’s what you need:
-Water, Wine, or some other Liquid Medium (not syrup) in some sort of receptacle
-Salt, Powdered Chalk, or Warm Ashes (not too hot)
-A Living (soon to be dead then living again) Fly

Place your living fly in the liquid filled receptacle in such a way as it cannot escape. Remember, flies are wily when faced with impending doom. Allow sufficient time to pass that your fly is certainly dead. No amount of time is too great. One cannot become overly dead.
Make sure you have an audience. You should always have witnesses when you do great things. Your memoirs will be much more convincing.
Once the fly is good and dead, remove it from the liquid medium and place it on a flat surface such as your kitchen counter, or a whale’s scapula.
Now you must gently cover the fly corpse in whichever solid medium you’ve chosen, taking care not to crush it. You don’t need much, just enough to cover it. Once the fly re-animates you want it to be able to shake off the dust and proverbial cobwebs.
Before you know it you should have a born again fly, ready once again to tread all over any food you leave out.
Now you can pat yourself on the back, or give out your phone number, because you just pulled off a feat that would most likely have gotten you killed in horrific manner not too long ago, with no chance of revivification. You’ve played God my dear reader, and it’s not over yet, because now you get to decide whether it continues to live or dies again. Thumb up or thumb down. It’s in your hands (you should probably wash your hands).


Alternate Endings:

1) Tie a string around the fly’s lifeless corpse and fly it like a kite once it’s revived.
2) Place it in a container with other living flies and see if it eats their brains.


Typewriter’s Note: I haven’t tried this experiment with any other living things, like cats or zebras, and do not condone that level of experimentation. If you choose to do so, please do not cite this source of inspiration, though if you want to smash up some spiders go right ahead.