Wow

I was 6 or 7 years old, and my sister Mary was maybe 13 or 14 at the time.  We were sitting side by side at our parents kitchen table doing school homework.  Suddenly Mary said, "I can bring a dead fly back to life."  Living on a dairy farm during the 1950s I had seem about a zillion dead flies in my short lifetime, but I never saw any of them return to life so I laughed at that idea.
Mary picked up a drinking glass about half full of water that had a drowned fly in it.  She asked me, "Is that fly dead?"
It certainly looked like it to me so I agreed it sure seemed dead.  Mary poured a little salt on the table from the shaker sitting there.  She placed the 'dead' fly in the salt and began to gently stir it around with a toothpick.  After a minute or so the fly flew away.  I was astounded.  I don't know now what the trick was, but I suspect she had seen the fly enter the glass and knew it was not dead, but merely in a state of distress.  Maybe she did know how to return a dead fly to life again.