My Controversial Thoughts On Fleas, Ticks, Flies And Maggots

One summer day during my teen years, I happened to be partaking of my all-time favorite hobby: Sitting underneath a huge Elm tree in our backyard and playing with my pet dog, “Tramp.” This story does not have a thing to do with “Tramp,” inasmuch as it does what I discovered while petting my black and tan pup: A part of me began to surge and come alive with activity and start asking deep questions about God, creation, and why He created such things as fleas, ticks, flies, and maggots.

Sincere to my vinyl album collection, I recall that Tuesday afternoon like it was yesterday. At first, I thought it sac religious to be asking, much less asking out loud such questions about God and His higher plans that He set in motion when He created people, places, and things. I dared not share my newly-found interest of asking God these mind-boggling questions because my parents, although Christians, were prone to accept and believe God’s work at face value without asking any questions--as they were afraid that God would strike them down with a terrible disease or worse, cause the I.R.S. to audit my dad’s accounts.

In the Judeau-Christian world, which I am a part, do believe, without argument, that God did make everything ‘in the beginning’ as it’s written in the Book of Genesis and the Book of St. John. So I believed that God made ALL things and yes, that did include all creeping things, fowls of the air, fish, turtles, snakes, and even vermin such as maggots. I had no problem believing His creative work in the ‘how’ He made all things, but I did have a big problem with the ‘why’ He made certain things.

(I apologize for being away for a moment. I left to get a fresh cup of coffee and check with the major news services on the U.S. Debt Crisis and also hear how I can lose 50 pounds by buying Marie Osmond’s diet plan. I am very sorry.)

It’s not a problem of loving God, I do love God and all of His character, attributes, and makeup, but as a curious, frail mortal being, I have certain questions and remarks concerning ‘certain’ forms of life that I find, even in my limited intelligence, has little or no significance in the progressive motions of life as we know it. Yet they still exist--year after year. Fleas, ticks, flies, and maggots. If I were a flea, tick, fly or maggot, I would definitely have an identity crisis of epic proportions. Just what is my purpose on the earth, besides devouring dung piles left by herds of African elephants, or making every peace-loving canine and feline’s life miserable and not having any remorse about it.

Now I do not want my story to be that involved with various religious doctrines, beliefs, and agenda’s that boggle my mind. Take the Zin Buddhists and Hindu’s who are fantastic people of God’s fixture: Mankind. These people are taught from birth to value ALL forms of life. Yes, even ticks, fleas, flies and maggots. And for these special people to even think about ridding their homes or fields of such life forms, would be a tragic sin against God. I respect that. I do. “Everything--to the smallest to the biggest and everyone from the powerful to the weakest is important in the grand scheme of life. How? Is my lack of metaphysical and theological wisdom that obvious?

This is where mortal thinking, although very frail and limited, meets the supernatural mind of God who sees things not as we see them and made things to suit His way of thinking. But fleas, ticks, flies, and maggots? Father, certainly you had a higher reasoning for creating these creatures that stir up pain and aggravation among your people. To say nothing about the dreadful diseases that they carry. I know. You thought of that too. I wasn’t implying that you, Father, were like me and not that educated.

I want to share my personal opinions and views (you knew that was coming), about why “I” think that fleas, ticks, flies and maggots and the millions of other pesky creatures were put on this earth.

There is a modern scriptural teaching that is named, “Pre-Adam and Eve’s World,” and it’s fascinating. A Dr. Arnold Murray, of Gravette, Arkansas, a Bible teacher of over 50 years and an expert in the Hebrew manuscripts, which the King James Bible was translated, teaches this particular doctrine with ease and fluent grace. And most of it, I understand. Murray doesn’t make his Bible teachings complicated.

Murray stated one time that before Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the Tree of good and evil, that nature, animals, and mankind lived in total harmony. Utopia, if you will, and everyone and everything got along. To condense this. There were no carnivores or meat-eaters in this time frame. Lions and tigers did not attack weaker animals in order to find food. In fact, Murray said that all of the animals were vegetable-eaters. But after Adam and Eve rebelled, nature, weather, the earth and all things God created, changed and not to Adam and Eve’s benefit.

So why did God create fleas, ticks, flies, and maggots? I can only assume that in His omnipotence He looked down through time to see a time in a land called Egypt where His children, the Israelites, were kept in bondage by “this” race and administration of Egyptians. Skip ahead to the burning bush where the angel of the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to go down to Egypt and free the Israelites. Moses argued that his speech impediment wouldn’t let him fulfill God’s will, so God sent his brother, Aaron with him to do the speaking.

Of course, as you all know, Moses told Pharaoh three times to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh refused, so Moses explained that plagues would be sent on Pharaoh and his land if the Israelites were not freed. Pharaoh still refused and swarms of flies, gnats, fleas, snakes, frogs, and other created forms of life invaded Pharaoh’s land thus causing this hard-hearted dictator to finally use some wisdom and let the Children of Israel go.

This would be the only purpose I find for fleas, ticks, flies and maggots. I happen to like frogs. They are not a nuisance. They mind their affairs and I mind mine. I do not even eat their legs. That’s how much love I have for frogs. But when it comes to fleas, ticks, flies and maggots, I can find no social or redeeming qualities of these troublesome creatures. Okay. I have watched documentaries on Discovery Channel with Bear Grylls, the survival expert teaching me that if I am stranded out in the wilderness, I can eat maggots to live. And he takes them like candy and gulps them down. I would really have to be on my ‘last leg’ to eat a maggot. I have in my younger, foolish adolescent days, eaten ants for fun. This didn’t kill me otherwise I would be here writing this story.

I know that God didn’t mean for us to literally live on fleas, ticks, flies and maggots. Did He? So why are they continually around to torment us and our pets? I know that Hartz Mountain made several fortunes with their anti-flea collars and other products to help our pets, but that’s about all I can gather that would justify the lives of fleas, ticks, flies and maggots.

Take the disease-machine, the tick. What really does it do all day long except attach itself to a peaceful dog who is minding his own business, and stick it’s sharp bill into the dog’s skin and stay there until the tick is bigger than a Snoopy blimp in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m sorry to have to be this graphic, but the tick is nature’s vampire as it sucks the blood out of the dog and yes, even us humans. Sorry and low-down. That describes a tick. I need my blood to live. So do all dogs and cats. So I am right. Ticks SERVE NO purpose in life. At all. And Bear Grylls does not use ticks for survival food either. That shows you just how despicable ticks are.

The same can be said for flies and maggots. I find no real purpose for these things that only take up valuable space in our lives. I despise the housefly with a passion along with its cousin, the ‘horse pen bully‘, the horsefly. I wish they would cease to exist. I am that adamant about seeing our lives rid of things like fleas, ticks, flies and maggots.

In all fairness to God, I can think of one solitary reason that He created fleas, ticks, flies and maggots. If it weren’t for fleas, ticks, flies and maggots, I wouldn’t have had a subject for THIS story.