It can be The Economist, Parenting: The School Years, or Smithsonian (but oh, never my food magazines). On the back door, on the windowsill, on the back of the chair, and once even in midair.
Yes, we have flies. I'm the Lady of the Flies.
It started with a dirty diaper, in a bag, in our trash can, which unbeknownst to us, stuck to the can and attracted maggots. Fast forward a bit (I know, gross, but we don't check the bottoms of the cans each week after pick up) and add in our old, ill-fitting, doesn't-quite-close basement window. Next thing we noticed, we had flies in the kitchen each evening. And I would kill them pretty fast, usually with only one swat. But it kept happening.
Where were they coming from? Turns out, they had amassed in our basement, probably because it was cooler than the wretched outside, then flew through the lattice in the basement door, up through the basement, to the bright lights and tempting smells of the kitchen. No wonder they were such easy targets, all that flying after being locked in the basement for days.
We've sealed up the window and are waiting for a replacement, but the flies do still come in ones and twos, hopefully the last of the horde, managing to fly past the sticky scrolls and bowls of vinegar, straight to the sticky-table buffet in our kitchen. We'll be calling pest control if the new window doesn't work. We're not above bombing the basement.
But, to be Pollyanna-ish about it, my aim is even better than when we started, we've become puritannical about keeping the kitchen sticky-mess free, and we've purged our magazine collection!
A while back I did some building work in my works office but a few days later I was inundated with flies of all sizes. No food, no old diapers, nothing to attract them, not even a computer screen. I decided eggs had come inside on some of the wood I had used, is there a clue there?
ReplyDelete