Pictures and Words

For some reason, the New Maggot video is taking an extremely long time to upload. YouTube tells me that it’s still trying, so hopefully will be up later today!

To tide you over, here is a photo of me eating some Cheerios…and defying gravity!

Gravity: Defied!

In other news, I have spent most of today worried that I smell like maggots.

Up Next: The New Maggot Video. I promise!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for a little over 120 hours, two plates of meat have been sitting in a cage in my back yard.

"Maggot City" expands every day.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that putting meat in your back yard is not going to yield interesting results*, well, you tell that person to visit this site for evidence to the contrary. It has been go go go around here since day one!

*It’s unlikely, but it’s better to be prepared with an answer if they do!

From the comments:

“aphephobia”, over at the livejournal mirror has a theory about the maggots:

I think maggots grow. The ones I’ve seen weren’t quite that big.

I have a theory that the “maggot roofing” as you’re calling it is insulating that area of the meat, making it more hospitable for maggot growth and incubation. Maggots grow well in warm, moist conditions, so the plastic is sealing in the moisture, and keeping in the warmth, too.

If anyone else wants to test this theory by putting two plates out, one with a piece of plastic and one without, I’ll happily host it. (I just don’t want to run it. I’ve got my hands full with this experiment, and after this one’s done, I want to move on to something that doesn’t involve meat.)

She also knows a lot about earwigs:

The parents raise the babies, so it’s not uncommon to see a whole tribe of them– parents and kids– in a crevice of wood or something all together. And the males and females have different pincers on the ends of their bodies. Furthermore– they’re not actually Australian natives: they came in here from Asia, I think, in wood.)

Another thing about earwigs is that they’re omnivores, hence why they’re probably showing more interest in the salad than anything else. Also, the plate itself privides a level of protection from the elements and predators.

Haven’t seen any baby earwigs yet, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled! I suspected they were foreign imports, because they were mentioned in Enid Blyton books set in England. I would have assumed that was where they were from, but Asia makes as much sense as anywhere!

I promised you a photo of the tartar sauce, so here it is:

Gravy on the left, Tartar on the right.

I actually really enjoy giving out nicknames, so I’ve decided to don those two congealed pieces of gravy inside the jug “The Gravy Peninsulas”, and the jar full of dead flies shall be known as “Den Tartar”. I’ll keep you updated on any gravy or tartar sauce developments!

The big news of today is Fort SPAM:

Tacticians take note - when constructing a Wall to surround a fort, choose something more defensive than Saveloy.

Fort SPAM has fallen. Right into the plate of mesclun (green thingies.) I’m not quite sure how it could have fallen – I have three theories at the moment:

1. Some kind of animal, possibly a bird or a cat, has jolted the cage, causing the SPAM to fall not only “over”, but also about 10cm away from where it started.
2. The SPAM is, in fact, sentient, alive, and perfectly capable of moving itself. Up until now, it has just been biding its time, but something surprised it, and it panicked, and jumped.
3. Someone is messing with me.

I asked, and Cannibal Kate claims that she hasn’t gone near the cage lately (ever since I mentioned maggots, which she really doesn’t like.) but I have a theory that someone could have pushed Fort SPAM over. My theory is based on a few facts:

The maggots. Let’s face it – these maggots have grown fast. Really fast. Suspiciously fast. By day 2, they were already larger than most of the maggots in other, similar experiments have ever become. Someone may have been coming in, and leaving maggots inside my meat, just to bewilder me. I don’t think I know anyone who just has a collection of maggots handy, but there are a lot of weird people out there, and many of them are my friends.

The holes in the SPAM. There are a number of holes in the SPAM, which look like they’ve been manually poked. I could be wrong, and maybe mummy flies always burrow out holes to lay their babies in, but until evidence of that nature comes to light, I’m going to be suspicious.

The SPAM having moved. As I mentioned, this is what put me onto this theory in the first place. The SPAM looks less like it has “fallen”, and more like it’s been “relocated.” Remember, they called Einstein mad, but then he invented gravity!

There is a jug of gravy and a bottle of wine and some tartar sauce in the cage. Let’s face it, they didn’t grow there. Maybe whoever planted those has been coming back each day, just to toy with my fraying sanity.

I will say one thing up front: It’s not me. I have been accused of doing all sorts of things, from stealing meat, to placing wine bottles, and I’m guessing that a number of you suspect me of pushing over the SPAM as well. I can honestly say that I haven’t done anything to alter this experiment, and I won’t do – the joy in this, for me, is simply seeing what happens, not manufacturing results.

Soif there is someone sneaking into my back yard, tipping meat over and depositing maggots, you should leave me a clue of some kind. Put the lid back on the tartar sauce, spell your initials out with the saveloys. Just something to confirm my theory.

If there hasn’t been anyone sneaking in, and these results are completely natural, please don’t anyone start now. As I said, I’m trying to capture the meat’s natural decomposition, and any human interference detracts from the experiment for me. (with the exception of the French restaurant prank, which was absolutely brilliant.)

Anyway, let’s get back to looking at the pretty pictures. A closer look at the (newly relocated) SPAM:

As you can see, the SPAM has also been infested by maggots.

The next time I get a chance, I’m going to email an insect professional, because I’m really curious about whether or not a fly would have/could have made those little holes that the maggots are sitting in.

So many maggots! My guess is that they’ll spend the next day or two getting big and juicy, and hollow the SPAM out from within, leaving just a husk.

While I was taking these photos, I got a little bit paranoid about the possibility of some kind of animal living in the little cage, the little wooden end part with the roof, coming out when I’m not there and tipping over SPAM so I took a photo to alay my fears:

Unless invisible monsters, or creatures made out of grass exist, I think we're pretty safe.

Thinking about it, it was a pretty silly thought. I don’t know why I imagined I’d never have noticed an animal living in the cage before, not to mention how it got in, why it hasn’t been eating the meats…

When you’re out there at midnight, watching maggots crawl and smelling the smell of rotting meat, your imagination goes into overdrive. Every brush of grass is a maggot, every nudge of the door is an earwig bite…even during the daylight, you can see how jumpy I was.

But you didn’t come here to hear about my paranoia look at photos of empty doorways…you came here for photos of maggots!

Maggots maggots everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

Stat-time:

Weather – “Was slightly warmer today,” weather-person Cannibal Kate tells me, “and it still hasn’t rained.”

Stench – 3/10 – ladies and gentlemen, we have stench. I wish this didn’t make me as happy as it does, but this almost brought a tear to my eye (thinking about it, and also when I first smelled it.) It’s not particularly pungent, but it’s definitely there. I suspect it’s the maggot’s scent more than it is the meat, but the fact is that there is a smell, and it is distinct. It’s not overwhelming, or horribly unpleasant, but it’s not a very nice smell either.
Stench radius – 60cm – I could distinctly smell this from about half a metre away from the cage. I suspect that both the stench and its radius will increase dramatically in the next couple of days.

The worst thing about the smell is that…I feel like I can still smell it. It’s been over two hours since I went down to the cage (these posts take a while to put together) and I have washed my hands many times since then, but whenever I look at the photos, I feel like the smell is still hanging around me.

As soon as I finish posting this, I’m going to go and have a shower.

In any case, this has inspired me to add a new daily stat:

Feeling of unease – 6/10. The smell is haunting me, I swear. Also, whenever I feel anything like a piece of cloth brushing against me, I jump, afraid that it’s a maggot. This stat may go down as I get used to it, or possibly I’ll start dreaming about the meat, and it’ll go way, way up.

Meat stats:

Can o' SPAM is average, the rest seem to be made up entirely of extremes.

Kangaroo Steak:

Toughness – 8/10 – I’m poking, obviously, the part that doesn’t have maggots, and it’s getting pretty tough. It is also looking extremely gross. Go check the photo up the top; tell me that they don’t look like eels to you.
Popularity – 7/10 – maggots all over the place. Goin’ nuts for the steaks.
Appeal – 1/10 – it is looking extremely unlikely that I would eat this, even if starving to death. It is slimy and covered in maggots and tough and getting darker every day. It’s almost black.

Pork Steak:

Toughness – 8/10
Popularity – 9/10 – much more popular than the Kangaroo Steak, I suspect that this will be the first meat to be completely devoured by the maggots. It’s going fast.
Appeal – 0.5/10 – even less appealing than the Kangaroo Steak.

Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce:

Toughness – 3/10 – it’s built up quite a solid little crust.
Popularity – 6/10 – nowhere near as popular as the other citizens of Maggot Town, the bolognaise sauce is also a possibility for being the first one to be eaten, just because there’s so much less of it.
Appeal – 1/10

Wall of Saveloy:

Toughness – 10/10 – the little buggers have toughened up. They’re like rocks.
Popularity – 0/10 – still absolutely nothing. Unless they surprise us and turn out to be full of maggots,  I don’t think the saveloy is ever going to go above 0/10 for popularity.
Appeal – 9/10 – down from yesterday, just because they feel like they might break my teeth.

Can o’ SPAM:

Toughness – 4/10 – same as every other day. When more of the inside is eaten by maggots, I suspect that this will change.
Popularity – 5/10 – just for maggots.
Appeal – 5/10 – you might think that’s unnaturally high for a food that has maggots in it, but they only seem to be in a small portion. I could quite easily throw that part away and eat the rest.

Daily headshot:

You can see my hair in the bottom left of the photo. Also: notice how eel-like the kangaroo steak is.

The maggot-infested SPAM’s new location is right next to the door. There is a plate in there with literally hundreds of maggots. Today’s head-shot was taken by me putting my head in, taking the photo as fast as I could (so fast and panicky that I can’t really aim) and instantly withdrawing my head. It took less than 5 seconds.

And then when I realised I wasn’t really in the head-shot, I did it four more times. This was the closest I got. You’d think that I could just stay in there for a second or two more, line up the shot, and not have to re-enter, but once you’re in there, you just want to get out again as soon as possible; also, I’m looking down, so that I definitely don’t come in contact with anything crawling in maggots, and so I have to aim quite blindly with a hand behind my back.

I think, ladies and gentlemen, that this means it’s time to give the headshots up. We’ve learned a lesson here – I’m able to take a photo of myself in a cage with rotting meat for 5 days before getting way too grossed out.

If I can get someone else to take the photo, I’ll consider it, but I suspect that the smell will increase steadily from today onwards, and I’m already reluctant enough to put my head in there.

If there’s anyone desperate enough for a bit of fame that they’re willing to come around and stick their head in the cage, I’ll happily take the photos for you.

Lastly: I’ve recorded another video! It’s uploading this very moment – subscribe to my YouTube channel to be updated the very second that it uploads, or just wait until tomorrow when I’ll put it up as a post.

I’d normally stay awake to include it in the post, but I’ve got a big day ahead of me, so you’ll have to wait until I get up tomorrow.

This experiment is getting grosser (yet more interesting) by the day.

Tomorrow: Two videos!