Friday, July 27, 2018

I Confess

I know I write about murder, but I don’t like killing in real life. Even spiders. I usually take them outside. But last week, my house was abuzz with flies. The kitchen and one of the bathrooms seemed to be the worst. I couldn’t figure out why they were there. I could tell by the lack of awful smell that there wasn’t something dead in the walls. They seemed to multiple each day.

I opened the door and offered them outside, but they wouldn’t go. They preferred to hang in the skylights and then dive bomb and buzz around my head in an annoying fashion. I thought it might have been the weather. We had another bunch of days with extreme heat. Maybe it was too hot outside even for them.

My basic rule is–bugs outside are okay, but when they come inside, they die. I don’t stock bug spray, so my arsenal was a spray bottle of peppermint soapy water. It’s what I use for everything. So I started chasing down the flies and spraying them, or trying to. My windows have residue of peppermint soap now and my counters are really clean. The spray is hardly deadly, but can make it hard enough for a fly to fly so that I could thwack it with a roll of paper towels.

Finally, there was a late night trip to Target. I expected to find fly paper, fly traps, fly sprays and fly swatters. It turned out all they had were fly swatters. We got two and left them in the two rooms where the flies were hanging out. And the hunt began. It turns out fly swatters are a lot more effective than my peppermint soapy water. And by the second day, we’d gotten the fly numbers way down. Now when an errant one shows it’s wings, it’s quickly on it’s way to fly heaven.

I did find ways to make homemade fly traps online, but you end up with a bunch of bodies floating in some sugar water. I decided to stick with the swatter.

And now it’s back to writing buzz free.

2 comments:

Linda O. Johnston said...

I don't like killing anything for real either, Betty. But you're right. Bugs don't belong in the house, and it's usually too hard to maneuver them back outside. Whenever possible, though, I ask my husband to take care of them! Glad you're now buzz-free.

Linda Osborn said...

I am currently doing ant wars. Every summer they suddenly appear, hang out for two months, and then vanish as quickly as they came. No real bug sprays due to cats in the house, but I am apt to grab hair spray, Windex, salt water....what ever is handy. Really cheap perfume even works ! The cats will just sit and stare at the little parade going by, they don"t want to get their feet dirty ! My annual adventure !