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The Evil Bee

3/2/2010

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Picture
Is this the worlds most evil creature? Although it looks like a Honey Bee, which is perhaps the world’s most benevolent creature, it is in fact the Horse Bot Fly, whose entire existence seems to be devoted to tormenting the horse, one of the world gentlest creatures. This is the Bot Fly’s life cycle. In late summer the female Bot Fly will lay eggs on the hair of a horse’s leg. The eggs are yellow and look like specks of pollen. 
The heat from the horse’s body causes the eggs to hatch and the emerging larvae will make the horse itch. The horse licks the itch, whereupon the larvae burrow into the horse’s tongue drilling holes to the surface from which they breathe. They stay in the tongue for 28 days when they emerge and are swallowed. Then the larvae mutate from a burrowing to a clinging creature, attaching themselves to the lining of the horse’s stomach, where they remain for nine months, eating at the lining and causing ulcers. After nine months they pass through the horse’s gut, burrow into the manure, pupate and emerge as flies, ready to start laying more specks of pollen on the horse’s leg. I there is any good or useful purpose in the life of a Bot Fly will someone please enlighten me.
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    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

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