The mothly management meeting…

I found these three on my kitchen table, not really the best place to find a group of insects having a good old mandible wag, but rather than swat them I decided to listen in and become a human on the wall to find out just what went on at the insect management meeting.

The fly, the hover fly, and the moth gathered together for a meeting. No, they weren’t playing in the cup this week, nor were they in anybody’s soup, but the hover fly was buzzing to get on with it, the moth all of a flutter, and the fly – well he was in the chair, which was obviously a wing chair, so called the meeting to order.

First point on the agenda was sugar. There simply wasn’t enough of it around the house since the entire family had gone on a diet on the advice of the government who had declared everyone obese and hiked the price of all foods thus promoting good health, if you discounted those that starved. The hover fly suggested that one of them should speak to somebody about it, read the riot act perhaps, maybe the moth as he had no self interest in the sugar matter, preferring leaves of one type or another, and might be seen as neutral. After some protracted debate it was decided to park the issue, consider the best course of action, and carry it over to the next meeting.

‘Goodz stuffz!’ The fly buzzed proactively. Smiling his well practised smile, the one that if you peeped behind it was full of poison and disease.

Next point on the agenda was light. The moth complained that since the continued rise in electricity prices that electric lights were not being left on frequently enough. This meant that he had very little to be attracted to and therefore had lost all purpose, after all what is the point of life if there is no light to flutter around? Morale was definitely low, which would not be tolerated. It was agreed that somebody at some point would write a paper on this and bring it along to a future meeting probably as a three slide presentation containing a problem statement, an action plan, and a disclaimer disclaiming the problem statement and the action plan.

In the interim an announcement would be issued, distributed on flyers and the antranet communicating that morale was to rise by 86% (a figure that all three agreed was a jolly good one) from eleven the following morning.

‘Good work team.’ The hover fly declared. But then sucking up was in his nature, it was how he’d risen up through the ranks. After all, not so very long ago he was just another insect on the graduant scheme.

The final point on the agenda was the ‘meat of the matter’ as the fly, who had climbed his way to the top of the dung heap by doing what fly’s do best – talking and eating excrement, so succinctly put it. The fly, the hover fly, and the moth talked around this meaty matter for forty minutes or so until deciding that none of them really understood the issue well enough to draw any conclusions on either what the matter with meat was, or if meat were matter at all. It was decided to invite a vegetarian and a particle physicist along to the next meeting as Highly Paid Consultants to shed some light on the subject. This of course set the moth off talking about agenda point two again, declaring that if only there was some light to be had he’d be happy and the hover fly asked if there were any biscuits and they all got on to the sugar thing again.

The poor moth fluttered on with his argument, knowing that he was no match for these two, wishing for the days when all of the management team were moths.

‘I agree.’ He said, although in his fluttering mothy heart he knew that he didn’t and worse still he knew, that they knew, that he didn’t.

And so it went on for hour after hour, the three of them debating and arguing the issues, going off at tangents, and grinding their own particular tiny insect axes to absolutely no avail and with no conclusion whatsoever until AOB (Any Old Bullshit) was reached.

It seems to me that insects aren’t as clever as they are cracked out to be, not even when they hold high flying management positions. They’re all buzz and no action, they flit around from one thing to another and despite their 360 compound eye view of the world they really don’t seem to see very clearly at all.

Just like people really.

Maybe I should have swatted them when I had the chance.

Meeting closed.
Date of next meeting: Whenever.