Dept. of Insect Hell
Monday, 30 September 2024 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rFloored by the Flies
or, Why Flymageddon Has Me Twitchy as Hell
So you, my friends, may already know that I am not a fan of insects. I'm not a non-fan of all insects, mind; butterflies and moths are lovely; ants, while I don't like them in my house, I respects ants. And there are many insects that I recognize are important in the circle of life. Even *shudder* cicadas.
Not mosquitoes ... well, yes, they're important as food for birds. So, OK, they're not completely useless.
But houseflies?
There is no reason for them. No. Damn. Reason. At. All.
I loathe them. I loathe their ugliness, I loathe their buzzing sound. I loathe - I loathe everything about them.
And over the past three days, Bob and I have killed at least 10 of the little fuckers. We've killed them with fly swatters. We've killed them with Raid flying insect spray. Well, I've generally been the "spray them and watch them die" person, because I don't have the kind of hand-eye coordination, or the reflexes, to successfully wield a fly swatter. As a result, our kitchen and dining room windows are now fogged with a poisonous, oily sheen that I will have to clean up.
The flies are coming in somewhere in gaps - gaps that we can't easily spot - around our window frames. These are windows we installed at considerable cost to improve on the really terrible windows we previously had. And their secret entry way is a horrible mystery to us.
All I know at this point is that my nerves are frayed. I've been unable to concentrate on things I need to concentrate on. I've been a mess.
Tomorrow, however, I'm going to employ a non-poisonous, non-fly-swatter method of capturing and killing flies: a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar and dish soap in bowls. My google-fu appears to show this as a wide-spread favorite.
Wish me luck. It's such a little thing to have tattered nerves about, given the state of this world, from wars almost everywhere to natural disasters killing people (more than 120 dead and hundreds more missing in states hit by Hurricane Helene, just to name one).
But it's still a thing.
or, Why Flymageddon Has Me Twitchy as Hell
So you, my friends, may already know that I am not a fan of insects. I'm not a non-fan of all insects, mind; butterflies and moths are lovely; ants, while I don't like them in my house, I respects ants. And there are many insects that I recognize are important in the circle of life. Even *shudder* cicadas.
Not mosquitoes ... well, yes, they're important as food for birds. So, OK, they're not completely useless.
But houseflies?
There is no reason for them. No. Damn. Reason. At. All.
I loathe them. I loathe their ugliness, I loathe their buzzing sound. I loathe - I loathe everything about them.
And over the past three days, Bob and I have killed at least 10 of the little fuckers. We've killed them with fly swatters. We've killed them with Raid flying insect spray. Well, I've generally been the "spray them and watch them die" person, because I don't have the kind of hand-eye coordination, or the reflexes, to successfully wield a fly swatter. As a result, our kitchen and dining room windows are now fogged with a poisonous, oily sheen that I will have to clean up.
The flies are coming in somewhere in gaps - gaps that we can't easily spot - around our window frames. These are windows we installed at considerable cost to improve on the really terrible windows we previously had. And their secret entry way is a horrible mystery to us.
All I know at this point is that my nerves are frayed. I've been unable to concentrate on things I need to concentrate on. I've been a mess.
Tomorrow, however, I'm going to employ a non-poisonous, non-fly-swatter method of capturing and killing flies: a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar and dish soap in bowls. My google-fu appears to show this as a wide-spread favorite.
Wish me luck. It's such a little thing to have tattered nerves about, given the state of this world, from wars almost everywhere to natural disasters killing people (more than 120 dead and hundreds more missing in states hit by Hurricane Helene, just to name one).
But it's still a thing.
