Pictures and Words

Ladies and gentlemen, there are two plates of meat in a cage in my back yard. Last night, I discovered they were teeming with maggots. Today…we have video!

It’s a bit low-quality, and for some reason my camera died halfway through – I’ll try to go down later with one of my real video cameras (you may remember film and TV is actually what I do for a living) and get some better footage.

As well as that, here’s some more pictures:

A montage of maggots

As you can see, the Bolognaise Sauce is fully maggot-infested as well! And, as you can hear in the video, the StinkyPlate with the steaks and bolognaise sauce is now officially called “Maggot-town”.

Later today: The daily check-in

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for over 96 hours, two plates of meat have been sitting in a cage in my back yard. One of them, I am far too excited to say…

...has maggots!!

First things first – I opened the jar of tartar sauce today. I don’t know whether it will attract any insects (still none on the gravy) but I gave it my all, and after an embarrassingly long time, managed to get the jar open. If anything happens, I’ll upload photos – at the moment, it just looks, not surprisingly, like an open jar of tartar sauce.

From the comments:

Commenter “Jen” has some theories about the gravy and bugs:

I reckon if bugs tried getting into the gravy they’d drown in it (unles “congeal” really does mean “solidify”). Bugs don’t seem too smart though, so if the gravy is still sink-in-able, I’m sure some bugs will find their way there. Maybe insects are smarter than bugs. Bugs are stupid. For example, when one somehow manages to get onto its back and can’t get up again. It would seriously starve to death or be eaten alive if it can’t get on its legs again. Why can’t it just use its wings to propel itself onto its legs? WHY?

I’m fairly sure that “insect” is a synonym for “bug”, but if you like, we can define “bugs” as the stupid ones.

Regarding the “what on earth is this for, anyway?” packet, commenter “RIUM+”, who seems to know everything, informs me that:

The black/grey/white stuff included with meat is an absorbing pad. It’s designed to absorb any liquids the meat might excrete, namely blood. This keeps the meat fresher for longer. They’re usually just made of paper/plastic and cotton wool. Because they’re blood-soaked animals usually love eating them (my cats used to dig them out the bottom of the bins), but they’re most definitely not edible and shouldn’t be fed to animals any more than you would feed regular paper/plastic/cotton wool to animals.

Apparently it has another, previously unknown use – cultivating maggots. I can’t see any maggots anywhere other than on the Pork Steak, underneath the “what is it there for, anyway?” packet, which will henceforth be referred to as “Maggot Roofing.”

While I was implementing the daily poking test (which consists of poking each of the meats with the Poking Stick. Science!) I noticed that the Pork Steak seemed to be softer than normal. Much softer. I poked around for a bit, mentally making notes to give it a lower “toughness” score, and as the flash was going off for a photo, I noticed something small and white crawling around:

And then, as I was looking back at the photos, I noticed several more of them, in some kind of white cream...

I lifted up the Maggot Roofing (see photo up the top), and noticed that there was a metric fuckton of them. Oh my god, so many maggots. Wriggling and squirming around, and they look like they’re huge, too. I’ve gone back to previous day’s photos – even the photos I took this morning – and I can’t see any sign of them.

I did, however, notice this photo (taken this morning):

Note down the bottom right, several flies actually crawling underneath the meat.

So it seems like they were under the Pork Steak this morning, possibly laying maggot eggs.  A closeup of the above photo:

Directly next to the Maggot Roofing.

It seems to me that could be several maggots, crawling around underneath the skin of the Pork Steak. Is that how maggots work?

My theory: Flies laid several maggot eggs within the Pork Steak, in various places, and the ones in the fat of the Pork Steak (of which there is plenty, I noticed when cooking some for StinkyPete 1.0) grew unnaturally quickly, and that is what the white goo they’re in is.

Alternative theory: the white stuff is maggot poo.

So does anyone reading this know anything about maggots? Do they hatch this big, or do they always start off small and grow? Does my theory make any sense? Why would they only appear underneath the Maggot Roofing? Does it look like they’re a few days old, or could these be newly-borns? If no one knows, I’ll send an email to an insect expert, get an educated opinion in.

As you may or may not know, the “let’s watch meat rot” project is not one that I came up with. The most famous in the original StinkyMeat project, and more recently, Glorious Stench, which relocated the project from a back yard to a college bathroom.

I looked back, and StinkMeat didn’t attract maggots until they reached the 8 day mark, and even then they were tiny. Glorious Stench took a whopping 19 days. It’s taken this project only 4 days to grow some full-sized maggots. I suspect it’s because of the Maggot Roofing, but I’m baffled as to why a piece of liquid-absorbing paper/plastic/cotton made such a difference.

To check if it was only the Pork Steak that had attracted maggots, I lifted up the Kangaroo Steak as well:

We have earwigs, flies, and...yup! Some baby maggots.

Is “baby maggots” a tautology?

This project just got exciting! (I assume that you, like me, consider the presence of maggots to be exciting.) We have maggots by the bucketload! We have also learned something – maggots prefer Pork Steak (or, possibly: maggots thrive under packages of cotton and paper designed to soak up meat.) Hopefually this knowledge will pass down to future generations, and be a key element of the cure to cancer.

In other other news, the “mesclun” (thanks, Bernhard!) is looking considerably worse for wear:

It's all shrivelled and miserable looking. This might just be what happens to greens after a day. For those, like me, who tend to avoid salads, this is an important educational experience. Also: more earwigs!

I saw three earwigs scuttling around the SaladPlate, and at least two on the Kangaroo Steak. I’d never even seen an earwig a week ago, now they’re all over the place. Oh, the changes in your life photographing plates of meat will make. (for example, I damned near squealed with excitement when I saw the maggots.)

The bolognaise sauce is looking pretty sad, and Fort Spam is still looking exactly the same. I can’t simply lift the SPAM or the Bolognaise up with the Poking Stick, but I’m starting to wonder if they’re full of maggots as well. The gravy is looking more solid by the day, but still no insects (or bugs) interested.

I decided not to open the wine, because getting it out of the cage looks like it’ll be too much effort (congratulations, Anonymous Prankster, for not disturbing anything while getting the bottle in.) Perhaps I’ll open it for drinks to celebrate the end of StinkyPete 1.5. I’m reasonably confident that it’ll be safe; just being in the same cage as maggots can’t affect the wine if it’s not open.

Can it?

General stats:

Weather – “About the same as yesterday,” official weather-person Cannibal Kate informs me, “still no rain.”

Stench – 0/10 – I am amazed. I am truly astonished. We have maggots, for heaven’s sake – not just one or two, not just little baby maggots, we have maggots in force..and still no stench!

I admit that I didn’t sniff from within the cage today, but I just went down again then, while typing this, and even with my head right next to the cage (near the corner with the Pork Steak) I can’t smell a damned thing. It’s actually getting a bit ridiculous. It has reached the point where I’m wondering if it’s a problem with my nose.

The stench will come in the next few days. It has to.

Stench radius – 0m

I’ve decided to start providing the meat’s daily stats in chart format, for ease of viewing:

You'll notice the continuing unpopularity of Fort Spam

The numbers:

Kangaroo Steak:

Toughness – 7/10 – tougher than yesterday.
Popularity – 5/10 – I’ve always said that nothing would hit 5 until it got maggots. Maggots, people! It’s finally happening! All my dreams, at last, coming true…
Appeal – 2/10 – I’ve heard rumours that maggots are actually very clean, nutritious even. This does not make me want to eat them.

Pork Steak:

Toughness – 8/10 – with the obvious exception of the part with the, well, the part with the maggots, the Pork Steak is actually tougher than it was yesterday.
Popularity – 7/10 – so many maggots. Also, flies continue to be interested. No ants though…are insects territorial?
Appeal – 1/10 – even more offputting than the maggots is the white goo that they’re in. What is that?

Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce:

Toughness – 0/10 – the Poking Stick continues to meet with no resistance.
Popularity – 3/10 – there’s definitely continued interest from files, but the ants seem to have moved on. I’m really curious as to whether there are maggots within – I zoomed in on one of the photos from today, and I found what could be hints of maggots, but it’s hard to tell – what do you think?

Top left looks like potential maggots to me, but at this point, everything looks like maggots to me. I'll try to get better photos tomorrow during the daylight hours.

Appeal – 4/10 – it’s slightly more appealing than the other two meats on this plate (mainly due to lack of maggots) but over all, it’s still looking pretty foul.

Wall of Saveloy:

Toughness – 8.5/10 – tougher again since. They’re also starting to look slightly shrivelled. Photos tomorrow, for contrast purposes.
Popularity – 0/10
Appeal – 9/10 – down a bit, but only because they resisted the poking stick a little more.

Can o’ SPAM:

Toughness – 4/10 – no change
Popularity – 0/10 – no change
Appeal – 8/10 – no change.

I am so glad I included the SPAM in StinkyPete 1.5 – it’s not very interesting day-to-day, but the fact that no insects are going near it and the complete lack of difference from the beginning of this project is fascinating. It could be a rock for all the change we’ve seen.

If you look carefully, you can see a maggot crawling along the Pork Steak. I could see that maggot quite clearly while this photo was being taken.

Honestly, it took me a while to work up the courage to go into the cage today. You see, what the photo up the top doesn’t portray is the fact that the maggots are constantly moving. And even worse, you can hear them. The maggots make a distinct, squishy noise. I’ll try to get a video up tomorrow.

I put my head in (it takes a few seconds to navigate the cage door without taking an ear off), took the photo, and whipped my head straight back out again. I normally take two or three photos and post my favourite, but tonight I was in there for less than 5 seconds. I don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to put my head into a cage full of live maggots again tomorrow.

I’ll tell you one thing, there’s no way I could do it during the day. There are close to 10 times the number of flies – even at night, there were half a dozen, buzzing around. During the day, I’d be terrified of them flying up my nose, in my mouth, in my eyes…

Tomorrow: Video and more photos of the maggots!

(I sincerely hope that everyone else is as excited about the maggots as I am, because otherwise I’m going to come across as a bit of a loon. Maggots, people! We have maggots!)