The Removalist by Matthew Franklin Sias

Author:Matthew Franklin Sias [Sias, Matthew Franklin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912701414
Publisher: Vulpine Press
Published: 2019-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

Of Maggots and Men

Among the candidates for “my favorite insect,” flies and their horrible little children, maggots, rank rather low on my list. At once both fascinating and revolting, maggots have been nature’s little morticians for eons, munching happily on dead flesh and then loping away to pupate and become adult flies. Within hours of a death, the ubiquitous fly homes in on the smell of a dead body, like a shark to blood. A body left outside for even three hours may have what appears to be Parmesan Cheese in the nostrils and corners of the mouth—fly egg clusters, soon to become wiggling white maggots.

At first feeding on fluids exuding from mucous membranes and open wounds, the maggots go through three molts, or instars, before leaving the body to form a pupa. Through these molts, they increase in size and ferocity, ultimately burrowing underneath the skin to augment the natural process of decomposition. On a completely maggot-infested body, one can actually hear the maggots eat—the soft smacking sound of thousands of organisms wriggling over each other and chewing with their hook-like mouth parts while they continue to breathe through spiracles on their hind end. A body in advanced decomposition that has been exposed to fly activity will exhibit large balls of maggots, known as maggot masses, in the nose and mouth. These masses will actually generate their own heat.

As the time for pupation approaches, the mature maggots crawl off to form their cocoons. In nature, maggots find shelter under rotting leaves or other tree debris. In an urban apartment, they crawl to the baseboards and, if feasible, underneath rugs or clothing. When they emerge from the pupae, they are adult flies, and the life cycle starts again.

Needless to say, flies are unwelcome in a morgue or funeral home. As I was assisting with an open-casket funeral at a church, a well-meaning funeral attendant decided to open chapel doors on either side of the sanctuary, allowing “fresh air” to enter the church. The doors were quickly closed by the funeral director/embalmer who had prepared the body, as leaving them open would be like hanging a “Welcome” sign for the local fly population. A loved one gazing down at poor dear departed Grandma as a fly emerges from her left nostril generally does not make for a good “memory picture.”

Maggots, the tricky little bastards, seem to be very good at infiltrating their local surroundings. Several months back, my pathology crew and I were completing an autopsy on a man found dead in a ravine. His remains consisted of a skeleton, a few lumps that resembled internal organs, and a thriving community of maggots swarming so fervently as to make the corpse appear alive. My task here apparently involved taking photographs as well as corralling the maggots as best as possible into a dustbin. Snap snap. Sweep sweep. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

Upon completing the autopsy, limited though it was due to the degree of our client’s degradation, we double-bagged the remains, and closed

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