The other day I was talking to Hurricane on the phone and he
had been busy hunting flies. I guess they had picked up a fly swatter at the
dollar store and shortly after I talked with him it was broken. You can’t hunt
without a weapon of some kind, so I suggested a rolled up newspaper or a damp
cloth. I could tell from the silence on the other end of the phone that
Hurricane was more than a little dubious about those old time methods.
I remember many hours of fun at the cottage swatting flies
which just didn’t get the hint that they weren’t wanted. I was a pretty good
killer, but there were so many flies that I would have been hard pressed not to
hit one. Those were the days when you would hang fly paper strips around the
house where you thought that flies would gather. They were disgusting, and so
are flies.
We had work friends many years ago that went to Minnesota
to get married. We weren’t good enough friends to be invited to the wedding,
but we were good enough friends to be happy for them. She was from a farm
family and the wedding reception was held in the family’s farm house. They told
us that for some reason they had to move the outdoor meal inside. Before they
could go inside, the men used sheets to herd the flies out of the house, making
many passes before the number of flies was at an acceptable density. Whenever I
here the word “disgusting” that is the image that pops into my mind.
In the springtime (mainly) the flies are pretty bad in
southern Ontario . There are Horse
flies and Deer flies that actually take small pieces of flesh out of you when
they bite, leaving little trails of blood on your sweat soaked body. I guess
they are named after the type of animal that they prefer, but I am sure that if
I had been anywhere near when they were being named, everyone would now be
calling them “Ken” flies. I hate them with a passion and I hate the non biting
ones marginally less. I remember a time when I was standing in a field with my
shirt off waiting for one of these flies to land so that my sadistic friends would
be able to slap them dead. Turns out that my friends were pretty much short of
useless when it came to killing deer flies. Oh, they had a lot of fun slapping
me till my upper body was pink, but there were too few dead flies to justify
the pain.
I have in recent years mounted dead fly bodies on pins
outside of my door in the hopes that the other flies would take the hint. The fly
can see quite well with what is known as a compound eye that is made up of many
lenses. Each lens is like a pixel, so the more lenses in the eye, the sharper the image.
Even with these marvellous eyes, the flies still come into the house in spite
of the dire warning outside each door. I guess it doesn’t matter how good your
eyes are if you have a tiny insect brain.
Last night I tried my hand at making a fly swatter that
would not only kill flies, but would be strong enough so that a five year old
and a two year old would have a hard time destroying it. It turned out pretty
good with a sturdy twisted wire handle, a leather swat surface and a turned
wooden handle. I have hopes that Hurricane will claim many kills before the end
of summer.
I had a friend many years ago that hated flies probably more
than I did. Sonny found an ad in the paper for a method of killing flies that
was 100% guaranteed effective or you money back. It was $3.85 and he sent away
for it and waited daily for the mailman to deliver this “final solution” to the
fly problem. The day it came he called me over to his place to show it to me.
It was two blocks of 2 X 4 about six inches long, one of the blocks had a large
“X” and the words “Place Fly Here” printed on it. The other piece had the words
“Strike fly with this block” printed on it. The ad didn’t lie, if you managed
to convince a fly to stay on the X and struck it with the other block, it would
truly and surely be dead.
That is what we call truth in advertising.
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