I've been composting my kitchen waste for 20 years, and there's not much in the way of rotting food that can gross me out anymore. But last summer, the maggots appeared.
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Over a period of weeks I noticed a few things about my new tenants: They ate like crazy. If you tossed it in, it vanished within hours. And the compost no longer stank; it now had the mild odor of damp straw.
The maggots were very responsive; they pounced on new food and retreated from direct sunlight. You could hear them. The mass of moving larvae made a wet rustling sound, exactly like falling rain.
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I became rather fond of my maggots. I took frequent breaks from the computer to watch them at work, and fretted about them when we went on vacation. I found myself saying things like, "Come and get it!" when I brought out a new load of scraps.
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There are things you're not supposed to put in your compost pile, such as cheese, meat and oily cooked food. But I wondered what the maggots would do, so one day I cleaned out the refrigerator. My bucket was brimming with forbidden items: old sour cream, chicken parts, a wad of newspapers soaked through with bacon grease. I felt like a bad, bad gardener.
I tossed it in anyway.
An hour later I peeked in and there was a party going on. The maggots were thrashing about in a feeding frenzy. Most arresting was the fate of a fist-size ball of formerly fresh mozzarella. The maggots had tunneled into the cheese, which held its shape but quivered violently. Within a half hour it was gone.
