©August
2006
Carol
Jane Remsburg
Fly Phobia
I'm usually not to bad about insects in general. Yet, barring winged things with a deep-throated buzz which by sheer sound indicate they will sting the crap out of you which can send me running like a woman possessed (so don't get in my way so I don't knock you down), I HATE FLIES. Okay, I'm not scared of them, it's just that they are so nasty.
This summer seems to be offering up a bumper crop of flies. Worse, over the last week, during our oppressive heat wave, even the flies wanted to 'opt out' and they did—right into the cool, air conditioned comfort of my home. Don't get me wrong, there are times an errant fly does intrude into the house and he doesn't last long for I am a terror with a fly swatter. While hubby is more accurate and takes less strikes to kill the pests, I go after them like a giant on a massacre raid expending enough energy to light up a small village. I don't care, I will beat them to a pulp and clean up the death scene afterwards.
We used to have quite an array of fly swatters in the house. From your basic stamped plastic utilitarian to the cutesy ones shaped like a hand. We later discovered the old-timey wire swatters, hubby bought like ˝ dozen of those and shared them among family and friends keeping two for us. However, with a kid in the house, kids hate fly-swatters just because children inherently know from birth that fly swatters can be used on the backs of those little legs once they get older. My child is no different from the masses and learned early on to either hide or destroy any fly swatter she could get her hands on in hopes that there would be no tool of punishment in the house when she decided to erupt into a screaming tantrum. Those tantrums were often enough and predictable enough to set your watch by. Thus she often ended up with a swat on the butt with the hand rather than Mommy Dearest brandishing the same whack with the fly swatter.
(Hurry now, call the cops, I did swat my child on the butt when warranted. However, I did NOT smack her in the mouth as my mother used to do to me when I DID deserve it….oh, how we've evolved as humans. Sometimes it's a tad harder to get respect out of your kids these days especially when they don't get certain nuances or pick up alert modes when they've finally breached the limits of your adult patience with their adolescent screaming insults.)
Oh, but we were talking about flies, right. Yes, I so hate flies and over the last two days I can't figure out how so many got INTO the house. I don't mean one or two…I mean a few dozen. Worse, I kill a few dozen, and there are MORE. And funnily enough, with all the fly swatters I've bought over the years I can only find ONE—the WIRE ONE. The dead bodies of flies are mounting. They have found two windows, one in the kitchen over the sink, and one in the living room, to roost at. How convenient for me…
And like clockwork, I'm after them every 20 minutes with paper towels in tow to clear away the dead. But I've finally figured out how they are getting in. We do have a screened in back porch that the outside kitties rest up against the screen door, often pushing it open a bit and whenever we humans go in and out, we have the door open longer than necessary to step over the napping kitties. Further, our inside kitties use the kitty door to gain entrance from the house onto the back porch and then back into the house again. Flies have gotten on the porch and those who have escaped the mad woman wielding the fly swatter on the back porch have found their way into the house via the kitty door with the cats who run in and out constantly.
I have come to a conclusion, if the 'fly issue' doesn't stop by tonight, tomorrow no kitties will be out on the porch for the foreseeable future and the main door, the steel door without the kitty flap, will be shut. Now there will be a battle with hubby, child, and kitties, but after two days with flies IN THE HOUSE…I'm done. I hate flies and they are too nasty to be abided within my little house.
This will only NOT happen unless others in this house clear the flies out. I can almost see the opposable thumbs attempting to grow on my kitties (they love their porch very much). They will either learn to swat flies with the swatter, catch them with their paws…or the vault door to the Great Outdoors is about to be sealed.
<<Cueing up the theme from the Twilight Zone…"Do-Do-Doo-Do, Do-Do-Doo-Do….DOOOOO!">>
