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| Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. Source: Wikimedia. |
It was the buzzing at first.
Loud.
Persistent.
What was the source?
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| Dead flies on sill. Birmingham, Alabama. September 2020. |
Ah, a fly, hovering at my bedroom window, indoors, in the space between the glass and the blinds.
Annoying, but it's typical for flies to appear as the air grows colder, and flies enter uninvited, and are sluggish, making them more annoying than if they simply flitted about.
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| Dead flies on sill. Birmingham, Alabama. September 2020. |
A day or two later .... louder buzzing, a chorus, a capella, in my living room, somewhere above my desk or in a corner of the ceiling or in the kitchen. I look up and around and cannot find the source.
The next day.
Holy moly.
There is a family reunion of larger-than-normal flies inside and outside my kitchen and bedroom windows.
Was there a dead animal outside?
No. I looked and I sniffed. Neither sight nor smell of one.
This required a consultation with Monsieur Google. Cluster flies. No easy fix.
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| Dead flies on sill. Birmingham, Alabama. September 2020. |
Shit.
Fortunately, it appears the flies have a sort of coming-out schedule in the course of a day and evening, so I am not molested 24/7. This also allows me to concentrate my radical defensive maneuvers during these times, with the following sweep-up operations.
Until I find a more definitive solution, here is my artillery:
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| Personal fans repurposed as fly swatters. September 2020. |
My thanks to a couple of health fair vendors from whom I received personal fans-cum-flyslayers.
But this unexpected fly invasion reminds me of my meltdown in Lalibela, the legendary city in Ethiopia, where the Devil sent one of his fly minions to plague me.
Ethiopia: Meltdown in Lalibela, Part 1 (with appearance by the Devil's fly)
Ethiopia: Meltdown in Lalibela, Part 2
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| Dead flies on sill. Birmingham, Alabama. September 2020. |
Does Alabama have an unusual relationship with flies?
This Alabaman author suggests that the fly is Alabama's unofficial state bird.
I am also reminded of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic, Tunnel in the Sky, in which the professor warns the survival-class students: Watch out for the stobor.
When you go to a new place, you know there will be stobor. You just don't know what it will look like .... until you meet it.
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