CREATIVE NONFICTION 51
In the infected female/healthy male combina-
tion, the results were more surprising. The
infected females were still attractive to the
males, who would approach their potential
mates with confidence, stroke their heads, and
scoot into position for a good old-fashioned
copulation. But the males’ efforts went unre-
warded. The infected females flat out refused
to mate, though they otherwise demonstrated
completely normal behavior.
At first, the males were patient. When a
female did not extend her ovipositor, the male
would climb back up to her head, stroke her
again, and wait. This could happen several
times before he reluctantly gave up, flying off
in pursuit of a different mate. But none of the
other females were having it either; they were
all stubbornly unmoved by the foreplay.
I dashed in to Drion’s office with the news:
“They’re not mating!”
But Drion didn’t share my enthusiasm, point-
ing out the possibility that the females had been
inseminated on the sly. “Maybe some male is
having a heyday in the females’ cage. Are you
sure you didn’t screw things up?”
I wasn’t. So, after several hours in which the
frustrated males tried again and again to coax
an ovipositor out of an unresponsive infected
female, I froze them and dissected the females to
ensure they had not already been inseminated.
The female housefly has three spermathecae,
each the shape and color of a walnut. These
organs store the sperm, releasing them as eggs
funnel down from the ovaries, en route to the
ovipositor. Carefully, I removed the spermathe-
cae, mounted them on a slide, crushed them in
saline, and took a look underneath the electron
microscope that was—as Drion regularly told
me—worth more than my life. I searched
for the clear, spaghetti-like strands of sperm.
Nothing.
“Run the experiment again,” Drion said.
I reared, sexed, and infected another batch
of flies, and placed them in the mating cages.
Again, the males were still attracted to the
infected females, and again, their efforts were
rejected. Within a few hours, the males started
hurling their bodies against the sides of the
container, some beating themselves to death.
Meanwhile, the females ran their forelegs over
their heads and bristles leisurely, and sipped at
the water supply, balancing on the Styrofoam
chips that kept them from falling in and drown-
ing themselves.the implications of our mating experiment
were that the MdSGHV virus either caused
sterility in females or rendered them unrespon-
sive to potential mates. No mating meant no
maggots, and no maggots meant no adult flies.
The presence of the virus, therefore, could
significantly curtail housefly populations. The
lab published a successful article on the results,
proposed a new group of viruses, and got a
grant to boot.
When I graduated in 2006, the research was
still on, and Verena and Drion were f loating
ideas on how the virus could be made into a
commercially available pesticide. Importantly,
a sister lab in Kenya, working with a closely
related virus, found that it causes sterility
in the bloodsucking tsetse f ly, the vector of
the often fatal trypanosomiasis, or “sleeping
sickness.”
More recent research has revealed how the
virus puts the kibosh on fly sex: in houseflies,
MdSGHV can curb egg development in females.
In tsetse flies, it causes the female reproductive
organs known as ovarioles to develop irregular-
ly and can halt the male flies’ sperm production.
Infected male tsetse flies are often incapable of
inseminating females.
What remains for me is the story and a party
trick of being able to discern a fly’s sex at a
glance. I’m not sentimental about houseflies
even though I adhered to their pace of life for a
year, structuring my schedule around the stages
of their morphological and sexual development,
telling friends I would be at the bar as soon as I
had sexed the flies. I could not escape them even
in my dreams.
Do I own a fly swatter? Yes, but I don’t always
use it. Either way, I always pause to look at the
fly sponging at an apple on my kitchen table
or cleaning itself like a cat. I note the distance
between its eyes, the buttercup color of its abdo-
men, and think, “I know you right down to
your ovaries.” Then she’s gone.