maggots

some of you may have come across maggots as fishing bait...maggots are tiny worms which derives from the eggs of flies and will be flies themselves.

Anyway I was watching a programme yesterday and they were showing these maggots applied with bandages to some bad wounds such as gangrenous wounds and they were cherfully eating the infected part away leaving just the healthy tissue...

Although it may sound a bit revolting, I can tell you that I would rather keep up with that rather than with a gangrenous foot and the prospect to have the whole leg amputated...

 

I've seen them used on horses to great effect

 

Yes, me too!!

Val

 

I went to an intersting talk an forensics and thay can tell how long a person has been dead by working ot the age of the maggots !"!!! They do this by using the tempeture at the scene and the length of the maggot to tell how old it is then add on the period of time egg laying is usually 48 hours after death and they hatch in 6 hours A bit gruesom but intersting stuff.

 

There was an Australian case where a poor kid phoned the police to say her Mum & Dad wouldn't wake up & they were turning black.

They'd been murdered in bed, but the electric blanket was still on & it accelerated decay. They used the flies to work out the time of death.

 

Oh I'm fascinated by stuff like that (if I could have my time again I'd train to do something in forensics). There's a place in Tennessee called the Body Farm (proper name University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility), where they place bodies in various places outside and study their decomposition, which can be determined by the various insects which inhabit the corpses.

Don't click on this National Geographic link if you're squeamish!

 

A good few years ago, on holiday, at the hotel and dinner table were a couple
(les be friends)
One evening at dinner, one was given a message, and stated sorry she had to leave,
as she was a forensic scientist and she was required to attend a new found body,
Off she went
I said to her partner surely they could wait until the morning after all it is dead, it is
not going anywhere
She too was in forensics, and an exciting dinner was eaten, over the explanation of
maggots and flies, and stages of pupae, with time of examination of the essence

It was really interesting but more up Victoria's street than mine I am afraid, but nothing
puts me off FOOOD

Jack McH

 

Just to try to cheer things up a bit, moving on from maggots being used to work out how long a dead body has been there, here's my maggot related tale.

When I was 16 and was in my first ever proper job, one of the lads brought some live maggots in one day. He put them in an envelope, and then sent me to see Denise in the office. My instructions were as follows:

Give the envelope to Denise, tell her you've been sent to ask her to count the contents, and then run like hell and try to barricade the doors behind you.

I gave the envelope over and waited. She poured the contents out onto her desk, screamed, then changed into a raging psycho and gave chase. I ran like hell back to our workshop, slammed the door behind me, and then leaned back on it. Two seconds later I was nearly launched, as someone had kicked the door. Between me and a couple of the older lads we managed to hold it shut while another lad got some junk to push up against it. We were holed up for several minutes before the kicking and banging settled down. Turns out this lady,as lovely as she was, had one little personally quirk that made her flip out at the sight of maggots. I never did find out why.

 

Ahh, another lost love, you must have been a real lady killer in your youth Dave