Housefly Lady

This would not have been my first choice of tasks to be greeted with in the morning. 

As I lifted the blinds on the living room windows to accept the morning light, I saw them: flies.  A dozen or more, camped out on my window, sitting pretty in what they assumed was a safe and cozy habitat.

They assumed wrong.  

Spiders, crickets, creepy crawlies, I am afraid of.  Flies, I LOATHE & DESPISE.  The buzzing, dizzying annoyance of them makes my skin crawl and fills me with a sense of purpose: to get rid of the flies, with all due speed.

As soon as I sized up the enemy, I armed myself with my hot pink fly swatter and stealthily approached the window.  I aimed, I fired...

And got ONE.  One measly fly while the rest were scattered by the wind swooshing off my pink swatter. 

No matter, I pressed on.  Mia and Lauren whimpered on the couch while I became unhinged in my pursuit of flies.  With my swatter poised for the kill, I tiptoed and dashed - snuck and darted, aiming to rid my home of my enemies.  I hunted them down until I could find no more, and scooped up their remains to be dumped in the trashcan.  I assured my girls that they could uncover their eyes; the mad swatter was done.

If only I'd known. 

For there in the kitchen was another colony of flies on the back doormat, basking in the morning sun.  I began again with my swatting, fueled by disbelief that so many flies had multiplied in my house overnight.  Where did they come from?  How had they gotten in?  By the time I finished up this round of fly swatting, I'd broken a sweat from my exertions.  During all the practice, I'd gotten so accurate in my aim that I'd even managed to take down a few nasty flies in mid air.  The satisfaction of feeling the fly hit the plastic and shoot off into the distance was a beautiful thing.  Never mind that I couldn't find where the flattened fly had landed; at least it wasn't buzzing and darting around me any longer. 

I went about the rest of my day in relative peace, stopping to grab my swatter several times for a lone fly that had escaped my early morning raid.  But I didn't come across an entire family reunion of flies again.  I was confident that I'd taken care of the majority of the problem. Nipped it in the bud.

When I finally sat down to relax after the kids were in bed for the night, I heard it again: BZZZzzzzZZZZzzzzz.  Flies.  One in particular was zipping around my head over and over again.  I carefully stood up with a look of stern concentration and tracked it - where else? - to the same window in which I'd found the first fly colony.  It landed among a group of lazily wandering flies.  I counted them. 

ELEVEN.  What.  The.  Heck.  I'd been knocking flies across rooms and smashing them against windows all day.  I'd probably killed 50 flies already, and here were eleven more?  Unbelievable.  Never fear, though.  Housefly Lady With Pink Swatter to the rescue. 

After my initial fly-scattering swat, I stood crouched in front of the window, waiting for the little hoodlums to return.  I barely moved my head, using only my eyes to track their erratic paths.  But these late evening flies were the ones that had evaded me all day; they were resilient.  I'd smash them to the ground and go to scoop them up only to have them fly away again. 

At one point I caught sight of my reflection in the dark window: crouched, poised, scowling, hovering, then weilding my swatter like a hot pink sword.  I was profoundly glad that the window isn't able to be seen by any neighbors - my level of dedication was fanatical.  It took every ounce of my concentration to get rid of that last lot of flies.  But I did it.

The flies lost and I...

Wait...

BZzzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZ...


And I give up.  I will now be going crazy. 

Pray that my rubber room has no flies, will you?