Fly Views

I was a Vegetarian until I discovered Flies

Recovering Vegetarian Mrs. P. Green tells us how Flies saved her from a fate worse than death - Broccolli and Spinach Pancakes.

Worms. I loved them, as a child. And I eventually became a vegetarian because of - worms.

I used to eat worms all the time. I had ten for breakfast, twenty for lunch, and one hundred for dinner. I liked them best raw. They would wriggle and jiggle and tickle and wiggle down my throat, and I would giggle back at them. But I also ate them fried or souffleed or any other way you wanted to have them. And whenever my parents had spaghetti, I would slip a can of worms onto their plate (they never knew the difference.)
Then one day, when I was 11 years old, I looked at my plate of worms and almost vomited. I don't know why. I started having nightmares about worms. I saw them (in my dreams) writhing in my stomach and eating their way through my intestines.

So I gave worms up, and turned to meat. I couldn't eat anything if it didn't have a meat content. Bucketloads of pork, sausages, devon, steak, mutton, lamb, poultry, ham, salami, bacon, venison, hamburgers and hotdogs disappeared down my throat. Then I got addicted. I would sit at the table in the morning and work my way through twenty plates of processed mince, lightly fried. My addiction even took over my viewing habits; I would watch videos of abbatoirs obsessively, rewinding and fast forwarding so I could see my favourite bits over and over and over again, like somebody watching a porn film. It turned me on.
It couldn't last. I got disgusted with myself. I started having dreams of worms again, slithering lithely over long, firm, skin-coloured sausages and over strange, round, grey-coloured lamb-chops.

Then one day, a vegetarian came to my door and told me how Meat is Murder and Eggs are Rape and How would I Feel If I Was a Chicken and Why Didn't I Try a Carrot Instead? And my life changed. From now on, I would only eat vegetables. I wasn't picky. Chinese beans were my favourite meal, but I also ate peas, lettuce, and chokoes regularly. On Sundays, I ate pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and carrots, which gave my skin a healthy bright orange tint. My favourite drink was wheatgrass juice, and I was very fond of it. (Perhaps too fond: it got to the point, in the later years of my Vegetarianism, that I had to have it injected into my veins, making my skin turn a bright green colour.)
After five years of this, I wouldn't know when I went to bed what colour I would be in the morning. Depending on what I had eaten that week, my skin colour would be either green or yellow or orange or purple, or sometimes a disturbing combination of all the primary colours.
As for my poor, long-suffering dog, his skin and eyes and fur were an odd shade of purple. You see, I fed him a diet of beetroot juice, prescribed by the vet (a fellow vegetarian.) It made him nervous and irritable, but I just couldn't stand the thought of him actually eating meat. After the first few weeks, he would just lie dolefully in the corner with his head in his paws, hardly lifting it all day, even when it was mealtime.
You see where this was going? I had become addicted again. I knew it, but I couldn't stop. I had to get my hit from somewhere. But one day, I looked at my plate of broccoli and spinach pancakes, and knew that I couldn't go on this way. Something had to change.

I didn't eat for a number of days. My skin gradually returned to a normal shade of pink, but I grew weaker and weaker. Then, one day, a friend showed me her copy of The Daily Fly. I was intrigued...
Should I give it a go? I was frightened and apprehensive, but what else did I have to lose? The next morning, I squashed a fly against the windowsill, and picked it up and tasted it experimentally with my tongue. It was delicious! I felt a great wave of health and vitality through my system. I knew I had found my meaning in life.
Now, I only eat flies. But I'm careful: I have them in moderation. I have one for breakfast, one for lunch, and two for dinner. When I feel especially proud, I give myself a treat of one extra fly. And I'm careful to vary my diet. I have dung-flys some days, blowflies on others, and common old house flies at other times.
Oh, and my dog? He likes them, too, which I'm happy about. After those disgusting meals of processed beetroot juice I gave him, I'm not surprised. Now, when it's dinner time, he gets quite lively. Sometimes I even feed him the legs of the flies that I cook.
Thankyou, Society of Fly Eaters, for making me a better person.

Miss Perpugilliam Green

And thankyou, Miss P. Green, for courageously telling us that harrowing tale about your struggles against the evils of Vegetarianism.

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