Brine Flies"There is a fly which looks something like our house fly...Any time you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide and this extends clear around the lake..." Mark Twain, 1872
If only all flies were as nice as Mono Lake's brine fly: they will not bite, bother, or even land on humans. They begin their lives in Mono Lake as eggs, then mature to larvae and the cocoon-like palute. The birds eat both larvae and adults. The Kuzaeika Paiute Indians used to gather the pupae, dry them rub the shell o ff, and boil them into mush or add them to other food. The incredible numbers of flies seen by the Indians and Twain have not occurred in recent years.
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