It’s finally grown cool, and for some reason we’re having a resurgence of flies.
This latest batch are huge articulated flies. Not bulbous horseflies, but wasp-waisted flies that seem double the size of their horsefly cousins.
They are big. They are slow. And they make me feel guilty when I kill them.
Part of this is because they have so much body mass that I can see their faces. And curled-up legs. And their newly dimmed eyeballs.
Second, they have so much body mass that the electric zapper just keeps zapping and won’t let up. Usually, average fly, one zap, that’s it, bang the racket on the edge of the trash and rest in peace. These new flies trigger a volley of twenty zaps that won’t let up.
It was so bad I finally had to switch to the brute force flyswatter. They have big eyes with which to see, of course, so they steel themselves for the flyswatter. They’re too small to flit, but they can ride the swoosh of air as it sends them trundling slowly up by the kitchen ceiling.
I mean, I’m a human, so I won eventually, but it made me wonder, what brought in this new breed of cold-weather flies?