Gerald and Hims Baby Flies

I had not intended to take Anna wine tasting with the girls. Even I thought she was a tad young to appreciate the subtle nuances of the Zaca Mesa Cab Franc.

It had been raining all week, so I gambled and didn’t organize a babysitter. What were the chances that the sun would break through that very afternoon forcing LK away from the Golf Channel and back to work?

She was an absolute diamond though, and so were my friends and cousin who indulged the creature in all her two-year-old games, the most entertaining of which had to be 'Gerald and him’s baby flies'.

At the first winery Anna grabbed a Nemo book, crawled under a display table and quietly ‘read’ to herself for a staggering fifteen minutes while we worked our way through the enamel-scorchingly acidic whites.

Then she grew restless.

She decided to go hunting.

She saw a big housefly buzzing around the massive wall of windows to the left of the tasting table and she asked what it was, "a fly" I replied.

“What’s him’s name?” a question I was expecting because my little Buddhist is very conscious of the individual, and always asks me to name everybody and everything. After all, people have names, why not flies? Knowing that not providing a name would lead to five minutes of ‘what’s him’s name, what’s him’s name, Mumma, what’s him’s name’. I said ‘Gerald’.

She watched Gerald crawl towards the ceiling.

Then she spotted a cluster of tiny fruit flies on the lower panes by the
floor.

“Gerald’s Baby Flies!” she squealed and set about ‘taming’ them. She was amazed at how many she caught. No doubt drunk on some highly potent late harvest Zin Gerald’s baby flies proved an easy prey.

She caught about five, each one perfectly content to rest on the tips of her fingers - or so she thought. We hadn’t the heart to tell her that pinning them between her sticky toddler hands and the glass had not so much 'tamed' Gerald's Baby Flies as sealed their fate. She had five tiny carcasses on her right hand.

“I’m the best Gerald Baby Fly catcher ever,” she said “and now I’m going to hunt Gerald”

'Go for it', we were thinking, concentrating more on the double gold medal winning Syrah than the fate of poor Gerald. Imagine our surprise then when she runs over to us with Gerald pinned between her tiny fingers.

"I got him Mom, he's the biggest fly I ever seen".

Lord knows how she pulled it off, but she did indeed catch Gerald, and we put him in an envelope (makeshift coffin) for safe-keeping. Anna was worried about the likelihood of Gerald making a break for it, but Chilly comforted her by saying "I don't think so Anna, Gerald's not looking so good"

Let me know if you're ever overrun by Gerald's or hims offspring and I'll send her right over.