“Yuck,” said the poodle – A lesser housefly in the dog salon
“We really ought to talk about the value of every living being. The other day, something happened that just won’t let go of me,” says Benjamin as he sits on a windowsill, gazing out into the grey morning. He remembers the day he accidentally entered the wrong room.
Benjamin is a lesser housefly. A splendid specimen, if you ask him. Male, 5 millimeters long, slender, with white-rimmed compound eyes that give him nearly 360-degree vision. He loves zipping through rooms with abrupt twists and turns — humans call this “patrol flight.” For Benjamin, it’s pure fun. His favorite place: the world. Sometimes treetops for a swarm dance, sometimes the compost heap behind the bakery. He spends his days sniffing, buzzing, exploring. He doesn’t just fly — he lives in three dimensions.
But then came that Tuesday. The door was open, the light seductive. So in he went. “Wham! I was inside. And suddenly: Chanel No. 5 meets wet dog.”
Benjamin had landed in a dog salon. And not just any. Gleaming tiles, golden hairdryers, pastel-colored walls. Portraits on the wall: pugs with bows, dachshunds with perms, greyhounds in poses straight from Vogue covers. A poodle was being misted with a sort of lavender fog. Benjamin landed on a stack of towels and observed.
The dogs endured everything. Brushing, trimming, filing. They closed their eyes during shampooing, proudly raised their freshly groomed tails for the perfume spritz. And in the middle of it all: the humans. A battalion of stylists granting every furry wish. Benjamin was… amused.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he later told a fly named Cordula, “hygiene’s important. But this wasn’t bathing — this was worship.” Benjamin couldn’t make sense of it all. Why were these animals spending precious hours of their short lives on a rotating table, while he — a flyer, an explorer — was nearly smacked with a wet cloth by one of the stylists? “Yuck!” cried the poodle with a pink scarf. “What is that… thing doing here?” “Absolutely disgusting,” barked a chihuahua in a glitter collar. “She’s from the latrine fly family,” muttered a beagle with knowing disdain. “They lay eggs in compost and dog poop.”
Benjamin heard it all and raised his head. “So what? Do you have any idea how incredibly important we are? We turn dung into soil. Without us, your pretty lawn out there would be a reeking war zone. And because there’s so much to do, there can’t be enough of us. A fly like me brings about seven generations in just three weeks.” But no one listened. Just the offended side-eye of a beagle.
Benjamin fled to a lampshade. From up there, he saw the world differently. He knew: these dogs, as well-groomed as they were, lived in a very tiny slice of reality. For them, beauty meant: clean, soft, fragrant. For Benjamin, meaning was: useful, biologically valuable. He remembered his birthplace — a heap of rotting potatoes behind an organic supermarket. Not exactly Vogue material, but bursting with life. Maggots with tiny bristles, pupae with filament-like appendages, everything in motion. And while he spent his larval days there, waste became soil again. “Cycle,” a beetle once called it. “Value creation,” added a worm.
But in the salon, value was defined by shine. And Benjamin? He didn’t shine. He shimmered. A subtle difference. One stylist spotted him. “Eeeek!” she screamed and grabbed a flyswatter. Benjamin zigzagged through the air, looped around a hair dryer hood, and landed — plop — in the food bowl of a cocker spaniel.
Silence. Everyone stared. Benjamin stared back.
“I’ve got more taste receptors on my feet than you’ve got in your entire snout,” he finally said. “I can smell if an apple is ripe or rotten without taking a bite. I see the world in mosaics, thousands of frames per second. And I can fly. No leash, no perfume.”
Silence. Then a sneeze. The poodle cleared his throat. “Still… you’re kind of… dirty.” Benjamin shrugged his wings. “And you’re kind of… boring.” He left the salon with a graceful swing around the ceiling light, patrolled the brightness one last time and buzzed out into the day.
Later, back at the compost heap, he told his story. Cordula thought it was brilliant. A moth said it was basically a parable. And Maria, the ladybug, nodded: “Just goes to show how absurd our standards can be.” Benjamin pondered. Maybe it wasn’t really about clean or dirty. Maybe it was about whether we recognize what a creature contributes — or just whether it fits our image.
He landed on a piece of apple peel that sparkled in the sun. “We really ought to talk about the value of every living being,” he said. “Because I’ve seen something that just won’t let go of me.” And about that name — lesser housefly? Honestly. Lesser than what, exactly? Benjamin snorted. “I may be lesser in name, but not in nature.”
