A bit of natural history now. Whilst maggots are kept dry they happily crawl around in the bottom of a maggot tin, and do no harm at all, present no problems to anyone. But when they are wet, the water allows them to crawl up vertical surfaces with ease. Now in the car was not a tin of maggots, but some four gallons of these sweet little creatures Dyed in various pretty colours, they milled around in a big plastic sort of.....er skip in the boot! Anglers' cars of course get neglected, and mine being no exception to the rule, it had developed a water leak in the boot, directly above half the world's population of best quality multicoloured supermaggots: a tench picnic fit only for the gods. Once wet the maggots quickly emulated Houdini, and by the next time I visited the car, for another gallon or so of Frank's Fishing Shop's best, the vast bulk had gone for a stroll. As I approached the car I realised all was not as it should have been. My dark blue paintwork was covered in little dayglow coloured spots.....and wait......the spots appeared to be moving. Yes folks, every square inch of the wet car was covered with the brutes, all engaged in one great scientific surface tension experiment . Not only that, but, as maggots seek out nooks and crannies in which to hide and pupate, they were crawling everywhere. They were even going around and around inside the car's instrumentation. I had a maggot pressure guage and the fuel guage, although still working, merely measured how many gallons of maggots were at loose in the car! Of course the main problem for the moment was the loss of the bait. Picking them off the car one by one was not a practical solution when there were tench still waiting to be caught. I raided the gamekeeper's compost heap for redworms. Two bucketfuls, still mixed with the compost, and we were back in business again. A few short weeks later, episode two: having pupated in the car by the million, a billion freshly hatched blue bottle flies were now engaged in hatching. For a week or so everywhere the car went, it left a trail of emerging flies. Stop at traffic lights, and a swarm of them would horrify any pedestrian within easy flight distance. Park near houses, and the occupants would wonder where on earth all the flies were coming from. Rather like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" but in miniature.
I could not of course abandon the car, or take time to de-infest it: No time, I was carp fishing that week! There were other subsequent escapes, in the house, in the fridge (keeps them cool in summer and slows down pupation), but none bring back the full flowing flavour of the moment as did the car incident.