Another stellar title there, people.
About three weeks ago, something died in one of our bedroom walls. No, this is not a metaphor. Something really died. We were surprised because for the life of us we couldn’t figure out how it got in there – but get in it did, and die it did, too. The smell was horrible for about three days, then faded, and we forgot about it. Now we’re being reminded in the form of blow flies that are hanging around on our lampshades and bathroom lightbulbs at night after what I can only assume is a full day of gorging on dead rodent flesh. They aren’t particularly bothersome, beyond being disgusting and pretty much everywhere – what I mean is, they aren’t interested in actually flying around or buzzing in anyone’s ear. But they are FLIES, and they are IN MY HOUSE. My husband does not understand my obsession with doing everything I can to eliminate every single one I see, in spite of the fact that each fly I manage to kill with the rubber flip-flop I’ve converted into a swatter appears to simply spawn two more; but he isn’t one to get particularly bothered about much of anything around the house unless it is interfering with his wifi connection. And I do get why he sees my pursuit of fly-murder as futile (perhaps Sandy could give me some pointers here), but how is one supposed to ignore the fact that their house is undergoing some serious Amityville-level fly infestation all of a sudden?
Anyway, my point – while researching this situation on the internet to get more information about how to possibly eliminate these pests or, if nothing else, see about how long this is going to last, I came across many websites offering less than stellar chemical solutions to the problem. One in particular gave me my “must share this on my blog” moment of the day – see if you can spot anything amiss in this fly trapper ad:
What I can’t figure out is if “currently being used in the war with Iraq” is supposed to be a warning or a selling point. Personally I read it as a warning, but then again, I was always opposed to that war, so perhaps that’s why. Maybe a conservative would see it as a good thing, and snatch some Flies-B-Gone right up. Who knows. All I know is that one red sentence gave me way more to ponder than was probably intended. And no, I didn’t buy one; I hate these flies with a passion, but I’m not sure I want to shock-and-awe them into a quagmire that lasts for years and costs me billions of dollars, so I’ll pass on the Flies-B-Gone traps for now and hope the situation resolves itself quickly.
Haven’t had time to edit any more beach photos, but I have several marked to work on this weekend. I’ve also gotten several new wigs in that I’d like to photograph but we’ll see what I can get done, and what needs to wait. I’m a bit concerned I might end up human fly paper if I turn on a bunch of fluorescent lights and aim them right at me – they do love the light bulbs, I’m just not sure about the fluorescent kind. We’ll see.
mareymercy. 
We have had this exact same problem! I cannot believe you are writing about this. Right around the time we had the burst ceiling pipe, something died in OUR wall, right behind my side of the bed. We couldn’t figure out where it was coming from and thought it might be in that damaged and open ceiling, but the odor wasn’t coming from that spot. Geoff said there was nothing we could do but let it dry out. YECH. To this day (and this was weeks ago, now), I have a candle burning at night to dispel the last remnants of this awful episode. I just hope it wasn’t the tiny bunny I saw scooting down the run behind the house. :-(.
Towel snapping to kill flying insects is a technique I learned in South America. You take a thin cotton or linen towel and snap it the way people do in locker rooms. The insect doesn’t see it coming, like they do a swatter or shoe and almost always, once you master the snap, it knocks them silly onto the floor. Then you can take them outside or … well….
The Iraq war? How crazy is that! 🙂
Well, practice your towel-snapping technique, because if you haven’t had the flies yet they are coming. I don’t know why I thought we’d get away with not having this happen again. We’ve had things die in our walls before and always had to deal with the flies about a month later, yet it still took me by surprise this time and FEELS like it’s worse than previous times, although that is unlikely. Unless whatever died in the wall this time is particularly huge. It also died right on my side of the bed in the bedroom, or so it seemed! Weird.
I actually read about these suckers last night, and it seems they are active during the day and resting at night, which is why we only see them in the evenings – they are actually just chilling out on the walls and not flying around much. In fact if you don’t start swatting at them they don’t much bother you – but GROSS. What I’ve learned is to keep the house as dark as possible at night while this is going on, since when resting they are attracted to light sources as places of hibernation. So right now it’s either use a few lamps that have low wattage, OR use one bright overhead light, because the flies don’t want to rest hanging upside-down, they want to be vertical. So they will be attracted to the bright light, but then will hang around the walls near it which at least means they’re stuck to the walls up high where you can more easily ignore them. When you have a lot of lamps on they hang out on the lampshades (which also inspired Simon to knock the lamps over), and bathroom lighting fixtures are HORRIBLE because the lights are bright and have some sort of vertical covering. They were just swarming on our bathroom lights last night because we left them on.And Doug is right – if you ignore them they don’t do anything, but it’s too gross for me to ignore and I get into these 20-minute fly-killing sessions when all i wanted was to wash my hands, LOL!
Uh oh. Why haven’t I seen them? Maybe they are only out at night. Energy is so incredibly exorbitant here that we sleep in a totally dark house at night, save for the tea candles I have had on for three weeks. I do not like insects. I try to respect and appreciate their role in the ecosystem but they creep me out for the most part. I tend to escort them outside, rather than kill them, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. In fact, we let spiders do their thing because they take care of the moths that eat all my wool carpets.
[By the way, my early brain did not express my thoughts clearly, I did not mean ‘I can’t believe you are writing about this’ as in, it’s a bad idea, what I meant was, the coincidence.]
Our dead creature was right behind my side of the bed too. I slept in the Christmas room to get away from it and the paint fumes. True to type, it did not bother Geoffrey one little bit. Nor do the flies. I am getting my towels ready and will do a few practice turns around the house :-).
[And I think this title is actually very clever!!]
What you need to solve your problem are frogs. I figure a couple of dozen should do the trick. It might be a tad noisy at night though. 🙂
Ha! This cracked me up. We actually do get a lot of frogs in the backyard around this time of year because of our pond. Never thought to bring them into the house though.
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