Two days ago I heard a winged insect buzzing in the bathroom.  The brief sound didn't make me do anything about it.  This morning I heard the sound again.  Clearly, it was a bug spending a lot of bad boring hours between the shade and the window.  I lifted the shade a little, saw a fly on the glass.     Flies don't live a long time if they die of natural causes.  This one had spent at least two days trapped in the house, staying close to the window, which offered a maddening view of the free air world--an  unreachable place, the open three dimensional space where rotten smells mean continuation of the species.  The fly's purpose, thwarted, would have ended were it not for me.
     I had that six-legged animal's life in whatever I did or didn't do with my hands.  The fly didn't know this, wasn't aware of me.  Only the feel of barriers, the plastic shade, the glass, registered in the fly's experience of two days in torment.
     A typical reaction from many people would be to roll up a magazine or newspaper, or take a swatter, and kill it.  A sudden all-body blow, so jarring to the exoskeleton the whitish guts spring forth and stay with the corpse, resembling fungi on a tree trunk.
     I chose a different fate for the fly.  I went to the kitchen, got a small glass, found a manila folder lying around, and returned to the bathroom.  I moved the shade back from the window, put the glass over the fly, slid the folder under the glass's rim, and trapped the now very freaked out prisoner.  I opened the inner and screen doors, stood on the porch, and lifted the glass.  The fly flew, going on to do I know not what, although I suspect water and food were on the immediate agenda.
   
                                                                            Vic Neptune