As usual, I was at home doing my chores, when there was this housefly came by irritating me.. Hmm... why I called it a house fly? It has been staying my house for quite sometimes and it has become part of my family. So it is a 'housefly' instead of a 'fly'.

Okay, back to my topic. And at that point of time, I was cursing at that stupid housefly. And a question suddenly popped into my head. Hmm.. So should I called it a pest or an insect? I went to check on the definition of insect and pest. Insect is a small invertebrate animal with segmented body, 6 legs and usually wings. Pest is a troublesome or destructive person, animal or thing. So which means that housefly belongs to these two categories.

And if I am classified it as an insect. I am being very nice to it. It is no different to other types of insects like ants, butterfly... But I am not going to. From my grandmother's days, we all the while know that housefly is a pest. House Fly is often a carrier of diseases, such as typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and anthrax. The fly transmits diseases by carrying disease organisms onto food. It picks up disease organisms on its leg hairs or eats them and then regurgitates them onto food (in the process of liquefying solid food). It definitely belong to the destructive side.

But think again: In the list of insects, most of it are pest. Okay, what is it before a butterfly? A Caterpillar, right? Insect or pest? Can be both. Why do I say that? What does caterpillar consume? We all know that it consumes leaves. If there are only one to two caterpillars on the tree, the tree is safe. From a caterpillar to a butterfly, it needs tremendous amounts of leaves to sustain and change to a butterfly. Now, imagine the tree is full of caterpillar. Of course, the poor tree will be bald by then, and lack of nutrition as the chlorophyll in the leaves are its main source allowing it to obtain energy from light.

Now at this point, is butterfly an insect or pest? Maybe we can classified it before and after. Before it becomes a butterfly, the caterpillar is a pest. After it becomes a butterfly, it is an insect. Human are contradicting beings. We give names to classify these little creatures as insects. And somehow these little creatures start to interrupt our lives, so we come out another name for them as pests. So now, when you see any insect, you can think again whether it belongs to the insect category or the pest side?