Wednesday, April 15, 2020

The Flyover

Well, they all showed up on the same day. April 8. What a bunch of goofs.

April 8: Housefly Day. Not a ton of flies. Well, possibly a ton, but not a large number. These are the biggest, slowest, logiest bunch of fattycakes I've ever seen. They don't even fly so much as they lumber. They remind me of the big-bellied prop planes that used to trudge across the sky over our house when I was little. You saw them coming and you had time to go inside for a popsicle before they were all the way done with going over your house. They came from National Airport, which was relatively close by. That's the one that got renamed the Ronald Reagan Union-Busting Libertarian Assholes Airport, but by that time, the planes had a little more pep and we had a lot more confidence they weren't going to plop into the back yard.

I have no idea what was keeping them in the air. The houseflies either. In fact I've been watching them, and they don't all stay in the air. Some of them end up on the floor from sheer excess of avoirdupois. I coaxed three of them out the window already. You know how you open the window for a fly but it always goes buzzing off in the wrong direction? These guys just lifted off from the windowsill, I went to get a popsicle, and then I popped them on their fannies in mid-air and they bumbled their way out.

The larger house spiders are watching the flies warily and wondering if they're well-marbled. Spiders are not known for hunting cooperatively but it wouldn't be the worst idea in this case. Early humans could live off squirrels but if they banded together and took down a mastodon they were set for the winter. The smaller house spiders, meanwhile, are boarding up and latching the shutters. They assume mastodons are mostly aspirational anyway. You don't want one falling on your house.

I figure this was a single hatch, since they showed up all at once. The maggots had to be the size of pinto beans. I don't know how they got in. This is why people used to think flies were spontaneously generated from meat. You'd have a lovely piece of meat and then out of nowhere it flang out maggots. It took people a remarkably long time to recognize that the maggots came from fly eggs, even though the experiments involved were simple. (Cover the meat.) It was just easier for them to imagine flies came out of nowhere. Isn't that silly?

But we're way smarter these days. I've been researching a lot of typing on the internet, and it's perfectly obvious that my flies came from Bill Gates. Bill Gates is a multi-billionaire who keeps trying to do good works with some of his money, which most of us agree is highly suspicious. He has already been caught trying to depopulate the world using his dastardly vaccines, and now, with the coronavirus, the word on the street is he's working on a vaccine that essentially implants a microchip in the unfortunate recipients so that he can control everyone. You can see the potential for big mischief here, if you're paying attention at all. The odder the conspiracy theory, after all, the more likely it is to be true, because the best conspirators are known to be very sneaky by nature. As lots of typists on the internet are saying, Wake up.

So I'm sure that's what the deal is with my flies. Bill Gates developed them. Clearly, they're drones. They're spying on us every minute. Somewhere Bill is sitting in a lavish bunker watching video footage from my flies and I have half a mind (this helps) to show him my big white fanny. But I won't. He's just wily enough to have snuck in a real decoy fly, and I don't want to get into a personal maggot situation.

25 comments:

  1. Well, if you are going to resort to French, I am going to have to get a dictionary to read this. The fly season did get me off the couch to find the flyswatter under my bed!

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    1. Anyone who remembers where the flyswatter is from last season is doing right well.

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  2. I'm pretty sure my flies are still frozen, but it won't be long now. When they start buzzing in the windows it gives the cats something to swat at. That would be fine except when they get a claw stuck in a curtain. Then either the cat goes up or the curtain comes down. Neither is a good thing.

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    1. I've never gotten a cat stuck in a curtain but I've seen one drape before.

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  3. My first-of-season fly came on the 12th - maybe off of my dead ass? (I don't have a big white fanny.)

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  4. See, this is why I am so obsequious to spiders. We have a deal; they stay offa the floor, I stay offa the walls and ceilings. I leave them alone when I'm cleaning; they eat the bugs. Works so far.

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    1. We have the same deal. I did have one crawling toward my face in bed the other night, which was startling because I can't see it until it's really close, and I admit I did a big finger-flick without considering it first. Then, of course, I had to wonder where it got flicked to and whether or not it was planning to come back, but it's not as though I was going to skoosh it.

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    2. I'd skoosh it, the bed is off limits and they'd better remember that.

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    3. I had a wasp sting me a couple of times before I could flick it away from me. It was dark and I was abed. Didn't end too well for me and did worse for the wasp.

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    4. My apologies. The above "Unknown" was a comment from me - Cop Car.

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  5. "Typing on the internet" - what a perfect description of a lot of it :D

    When I think of flies what pops into my head (unfortunately) is the dozens and dozens of flies we used to have to sweep up from our cottage floor each spring. Dustpans full. Ugh ugh ugh. I suppose I should feel bad that there was nothing for them to eat and they died of starvation before we went to open up the cottage for the season, but I don't. I just can't. Dozens and dozens!!

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    1. No. It's amazing how annoying some insects can be even if they don't bite or stink.

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  6. Smiling broadly.
    The spiders have competition from Jazz in bringing down the mammoth flies here. I think ours have become temporarily extinct as we lumber into autumn.

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    1. Y'all probably have flies with duck lips and flippers or something, too.

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  7. A mouse dropped dead behind my stove one day and got to percolating before I found him. I knew I was in trouble when the big striped flies turned up. I also had a pretty good idea where they came from. That house was about as tight as a screenhouse where the screen was made out of chicken wire. Porous described it well.

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    1. We had one large dead mouse in the cold air return a few years back, and a dead cat in the garden--but other than that, I haven't smelled a thing here in 40 years.

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  8. I once intentionally introduced some Daddy Long Leg Spiders to our Front Courtyard because I heard that they kill Black Widow Spiders, which we started seeing way too many of. It actually worked... and tho' Daddy Long Legs are actually more poisonous than Black Widows, their Mouths are too tiny to bite Humans... clearly my Spider "googling" got out of hand, huh? As for Flies, they don't bother me but they drive The Man absolutely Mad and I don't understand Why?

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    1. Hmm. I don't think that bit is true about the Daddy Long Legs and their itty bitty mouth parts. But you just reminded me of what passed for a traumatic event in my childhood (clearly not a traumatic childhood) in which the boys in Mrs. Erdman's class caught daddy long legs and dropped them through the electric fan.

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  9. We've got the March flies here right now, in April, guess they got lost somewhere along the way, maybe took a sight seeing tour, but they're here now, but the numbers are very few. I had one buzzing about in my bathroom last Monday, so I filled the room with insect spray and shut the door. Went back an hour later and he was still buzzing, so I emptied the spray can and shut the door again. He must have died in there but I can't find him, so he's probably down behind the washing machine. This morning I saw another one the front porch table, right near the front door, these buggers bite, so I shooed him away with my newspaper and hoped he wasn't there looking for his missing mate.

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    1. Remind me to pee before I visit your house! Gadzooks!

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  10. We've entered Moth season here, big juicy ones who really want IN, but then spend all night wanting OUT, flapping against any light carelessly left on. My partner is busy putting them out, as squishing them is way too messy, and they're god's creatures, right ? They fall into my hair when I open the back door, which luckily is short now (the hair, not the door) or they'd nest in there..

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    1. I hardly ever notice moths. We have way fewer insects here in general. I like to watch the expressions on my friends' faces when they come visit and I put them in a bedroom with the windows wide open and no screens.

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    2. Wide open windows here would see burglars emptying your house while you sleep :(

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    3. When I moved to Seattle in the 70s, I rented a house w. old crank out windows, and NO SCREENS, which would be unthinkable in New England, the Land of Mosquitos. It was lovely, no major bugs, but many slugs to step over...Oddly, no birds ever flew inside...Burglars only took car radios...

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