Smoked Drosophila Melanogaster

[Paddler]

Journal, October, 2011: Letters From the World

Every once in a while I get a hankerin' to read a mystery novel. I tend to favor stories about the hardboiled gumshoe who can get shot through a lung, step into a doorway, light a cigarette, step out into the street and casually pot the malefactor between the eyes with his silenced PPK. So last Tuesday I went to the library and checked out a book that promised to contain a story like that.

Wednesday morning I sat down to breakfast with the book in one hand and a cup of joe in the other. As soon as I opened the cover I was greeted by the reek of stale cigarette smoke. The last person who read this book must have been a slow reader and a chain smoker. I held the book as far away from my nose as I could and began to read. About thirty pages in, I came to a place with about eight smashed and dessicated fruit flies stuck to the paper! The pattern repeated itself about every thirty to forty pages thereafter. I guess that was where the previous reader closed the book to get a new pack of gaspers.

I'm thinking about this phenomenon. What does the fruit fly concentration in the air have to be before you can slam a book shut and nail eight of 'em? Egad! They would have to be thicker than mosquitos in Minnesota! Maybe the fruit flies got cancer in midair and just "augered in" like an airplane in a flat spin. When I told the librarian about it, she took one whiff of the book and marked it for "decomissioning".

Mmmmmm! Smoked Drosophila jerkey: not just for breakfast anymore!

MCR>
Abstractor of the Quintessence
Order of the Digital Grail

[JackdeSpadas]

Now that's what I call gritty. Maybe a little too sensory, though!

[Bogon07]

I was hoping for an illustration to accompany the title "Smoked Drosophila Melanogaster" - maybe a smokehouse full of chains of them all dangling down.

Library books can be somewhat unnerving as to what you find among the pages.
Usually it is just enigmatic stains smeared across the pages and sometimes the occasional squashed mosquito, moth or silverfish but so many fruit files must be one of life's mysteries.

[Paddler]

Someone in this town reads hard boiled mysteries and eats macaroons, leaving coconut crumbs between the pages.
As far as wildlife goes, the books in our library are infested with pseudoscorpions. Maybe they were introduced to keep the fruit fly population in check.