Resurrecting Drowned Flies

I just found out that I am almost world famous! I have sent a party trick on a trip around the world!

Last fall, we were over at a friend's house for dinner. The Vikings had just arrived, and we were all sitting around making polite chit chat. This was made more difficult because it was in English, and four of those present were mathematicians. All of these mathematicians are perfectly able to function in public situations, but it was still just a bit dull listening to discussions of math conferences, moving in, etc.

The weather was gorgeous, so we were sitting outside. It was windy enough that the mosquitoes were not attacking, but the breeze seemed to be causing the flies to kamikaze into all of our glasses of wine. After flicking one too many glasses of wine and dying flies into the grass, I remembered the only useful thing Mama's second husband ever taught me other than how to find muskrats. This was how to resurrect flies.

Yes, I know, it isn't particularly useful or desirable to help flies have a revival, but it gave me an opportunity to display my social skills. The next time a fly started swimming, I asked them to let it be, and I would bring it back. They were highly doubtful, as was I. I had only seen it done with Budweiser, and I was considering the possibility of a 30-year-old memory having been a trick on a little kid.

So, fly dies. We give him a few extra moments to see if he is really dead in the Vouvray. We dump it out on the table, and then we cover it with a pile of salt. Everyone is staring at it, and nothing is happening. Low level of panic sets in, but then, a mini-avalanche in the salt! A leg pokes through, then a wing. It is a zombie fly!! Fly drunkenly zooms away, and a conversation with lots of multisyllabic scientific terms ensues that I vaguely remember hearing last in ninth grade biology.

I promptly forgot about this event until last night. A partial horde of Vikings comes to our house, and they bring a mathematician from Spain whom I have never met. He walks in and announces, "You are famous in my neighborhood!" Turns out that Geir Arne, one of the Vikings, had performed my fly resurrection trick at a math conference (they never provide real entertainment at these events) in Barcelona, and Spanish Mathematician had gone home and taught his two boys. His sons had then taught other neighborhood boys, resulting in phone calls from parents about these new, oh-so-useful hobbies. Regardless, I am proud that fly resurrection will never be a dying art now that it has been accepted in the European Union.