winging it by wilhelm
a hessian fly diary
Compiled by John J. Roberts

Note to editors

These diary-like entries were discovered mysteriously stored on my home computer. My first inclination was to erase them and blame them on some sort of glitch. They continued to appear so I decided to save them to find out just what was really happening. I discovered the writings were produced by a tiny Hessian fly named Wilhelm who laboriously dive-bombed the computer keys one at a time to provide humans with a vastly different look at their world and the world of the Hessian fly. Wilhelm's first book, Wilhelm's World, a fly-eyed view of human life, is available at www.Booklocker.com or www.Amazon.com.

greetings,

my name is wilhelm, a hessian fly, chairfly of the human research and interface commission, writing by dive-bombing a computer keyboard. i fly to the ceiling and dive bomb the keys one by one, turning at the last second to land on my six feet on the desired key. this is a difficult task and precludes shift-dependent characters.

i will present a different view of the world, as would be expected when viewed through the multi-faceted eyes of a five milligram hessian fly. we are blessed with a superior type of genetic memory, allowing us to reach back into our history as it is etched in the dna sequences on our chromosomes. having no written history is a handicap for our race but the home computer might just remedy that.

a bit of life history will help you understand my life style. hessian flies were named by you folks since you correctly attribute the arrival of my ancestors to the straw bedding of the hessian soldiers' horses during the american revolution. this is fairly close to the truth, but it was our intention to emigrate to america eventually so the transportation window spawned by the revolution offered the quickest way to get to the new world. we quickly learned that the straw was not just for the horses' bedding. the next time we seek to colonize a continent, we will surely seek better transportation.

when we arrived here, we were pleased to see this country had already begun large scale wheat farming, an activity critical to our survival. we need wheat plants to complete our life cycle. we spend much of our lives as larvae and pupae quietly contemplating life while securely lodged at the base of a wheat plant about an inch below the ground. from such a relaxing vantage point, it is easy to think clearly and not get sidetracked by activities of the day. our adulthood is spent in peaceful flight seeking a suitable mate and a hospitable wheat plant to host the eggs and larvae to start our next generation. unfortunately, we have not always controlled our populations often causing major reductions in wheat yields. this riled the humans and led to research programs to develop resistant wheat varieties. their devastatingly successful efforts took several years and killed trillions of us. the resistant wheat looked like any other kind, but was laced with genetic poisons we could not detect until too late to turn back. the carnage was dreadful. my job as chairfly is to learn about humans and teach them about us. hopefully, this will enable us to live in harmony.

ta, ta, wilhelm