Flies!

There are probably as many species of fly in The Gambia as there are species of birds, but as I am not a whatever-the-fancy-name-for-someone-who-studies-flies-is, I can only divide them into three categories: 1) the surprisingly beautiful ones, 2) the ones that are ugly in a beautiful sort of way, or at least aesthetically entertaining, and 3) the ugly ugly ones.

On September 9, the day before I originally wrote this post, I saw a surprisingly beautiful one. It was so surprisingly beautiful, I considered making flies one of my new favorite insect. I contemplated what a fly-shaped necklace charm would look like. Then I remembered that they eat poop. Still, it was really beautiful! It's exoskeleton (yes, I still remember words like exoskeleton) was iridescent emerald and its red eyes were perfect spheres and not too bulging.

And the day before that, I saw one of those so-ugly-as-to-be-beautiful-in-a-hilarious-sort-of-way flies. It was fat. And had small eyes that were kind of flat.

But mostly I just see the ugly ugly flies. The most common type of ugly ugly fly is murky greenish-blackish-browinish in the portion of the body before the wings and a dirty beige-ish gray in the back. It's also fuzzy, which grosses me out. And the eyes are a dull red.