Bored of the Flies

There's only a handful left. Bodies are scattered everywhere. Tiny, stiff reminders of the buzzing annoyances that have plagued our ground floor kitchen/dining room/living room all week long.

It all began last weekend. We started noticing an unusual number of flies indoors. The weather had been sunny and warm for weeks, and we chalked up the flies' presence to having left our windows open without screens.

And then their numbers started to rise. Dramatically.

Monday, Tuesday - Maybe a couple dozen, mainly on the south end of our ground floor. Congregating near the large foot-to-ceiling window. No obvious sign of where they were coming from. No rotting fruit on the counter. No open food containers. No signs of them in the cupboards or pantry. A mystery. Rains had returned, deterring us from opening the windows and doors to shoo the rascals outdoors.

Wednesday - Our housecleaner arrived and was totally grossed out. Somewhere between 60-80 flies had taken up residence along the southern window and the window of the kitchen door. Her face paled when I asked if she'd mind just vacuuming them up. Bless her heart, she went ahead and "hoovered" them, sucking up dozens into the cramped dark coffin of the vacuum bag, buried alive.

Friday - Desperation began to set in. Despite the thorough housecleaning, the problem had gotten worse. Much worse. Literally, more than 100 flies covered the windows and curtains.

Two school friends of Ben came over to play. They raised more than one eyebrow in amazement at the peppered pattern of flies covering the window glass and curtains. I started mulling over various ways I might explain all this to their mother when she returned to pick them up. I could just see word getting around - "The Eldridges... Nice family. Shame about all the flies, though..."

I called an exterminator, wondering to myself why I hadn't done so sooner. But after describing the problem, he said it was almost certainly due to having a dead animal somewhere under the house or in the nooks and crannies where the heating pipes run. He advised calling a plumber or heating system installer instead.

The exterminator's opinion echoed that of our landlord's father, whom I'd called earlier. And it occurred to me that rather than hire someone to rip up floorboards and trace our heating pipes into the nether reaches of our Netherlands' abode, the better solution might just be a waiting game. After all, there was no smell whatsoever - whatever dead critter was ensconced in hard to reach places was certainly so tucked away that the search would cost an arm and a leg to find it. And the flies just might die off after their maggots had finished devouring the nourishing corpse.

This wasn't an easy decision. The plague had reached nearly Biblical proportions. It was just so disgusting, words can hardly express the feeling of walking downstairs and into the presence of more than a hundred nasty flying varmints.

But fortunately the weather cleared up just enough to open the sliding door of the large window, and the kitchen door. Waving my hands and shouting like a madman, I managed to usher the vast majority of flies outside, to infinity and beyond.

And the strategy seemed to work. By evening, only a half dozen flies could be seen. This morning, they'd declined to one or two.

All the fun of a trip to the garbage dump, but without the garbage, the stench or the price of admission.