Lord of the Flies

Last weekend Clorinda and the ladies had a “Super Saturday” craft fair thing at the church. I brought Kathryn over, along with several items that Clorinda had (conveniently) forgotten. Somehow I ended up there. All. Day. Long. I’m sure it was a strategic effort by Clorinda to trick me into helping clean up after the activity.

Somebody left the door between the kitchen and the outside wide open, so for about six hours, every fly in the greater North Las Vegas area had free access to the kitchen. And they had a party. I started noticing the flies about 2:30, and spent the next hour killing them (don’t tell PETA) or sucking them up with the vacuum (also don’t tell PETA). I’d estimate it at 60 flies or so over the course of the hour.

Insert a memory sequence here. I don't know, a couple of wavy lines....

A little over three years ago, Marien came back to my room to chat with me. She was laying on the bed and, right in the middle of a very important conversation, the topic of which escapes my mind right now, she blurted out, “whoa!, that fly’s ninja! It was there now, but it was right over there…” But as she turned to look at the former landing spot, she discovered that the fly was still there.

And then there was another.

And another.

And another.

Flies were (quite literally, it turns out) coming out of nowhere. OK, so as it turns out, it wasn’t nowhere. It was the carpet. They were coming out of the carpet in my bedroom. By the dozens.

Marien screamed and ran from the room, slamming the door behind herself. I was on my own. I quickly put on the camouflage and the night goggles and armed myself with a flyswatter, sans the camouflage and night goggles. I’m pretty sure I was in shorts and a t-shirt, and I was barefoot. But I was on the warpath.

I smacked flies on the wall and flies on the window. I smacked them on the ceiling and the bathroom mirror. Flies on the dresser, flies on the exercise bike (OK, I should be honest here. Considering that it spends exponentially more time holding up my clothes than exercising my fat rear end, the bike should probably be called a “chifferobe.” Perhaps if Tom Robinson could come by and bust it up for me, I’d have some more space in the bedroom and I could start exercising. Or not). And then I discovered them rising from the carpet. What the what? (It was like that scene in Thriller where the dead rise from the grave and do a synchronized dance routine. Except they were flies, not zombies. And there was no dance routine. And I didn't have a red leather outfit with lots of zippers OR yellow contact lenses. Otherwise, it was exactly the same as Thriller.)

I grabbed the vacuum. And I armed the hose attachment. This was war.

Flies were getting sucked up left and right. They were slow. Really slow. Downright sluggish. It was like they were drunk, just kind of fly-stumbling around my bedroom. It kind of removed the challenge of the hunt, but I was OK with that. I did not want flies in my bedroom. I do not like them, Sam I Am.

Despite my incredible hunting prowess and the sucking power of the vacuum, the flies kept bringing in reinforcements.  I couldn’t figure out from whence they were coming, so I commenced recon. (Did I use that right? I should ask my brother-in-law, but I’m too prideful to admit that he knows something I don’t know. Flip. It’s probably wrong. I’m just saying I started watching their moves to figure out where their base was. Roger that.)

I realized that they were crawling from the carpet near one corner of our bedroom. It made no sense. All that was in that corner were the aforementioned chifferobe, a small dresser, and a bag with some papers Clorinda had dropped there about three weeks prior, from a merit badge class she had taught up at a scout camp.

I moved the bag and gagged. It was swarming with flies and maggots.

Clorinda had come to a young mens' encampment up on Mt. Charleston about three weeks prior to teach a Citizenship class to the boys. She arrived at lunch time, and we gave her a brown-bag lunch so she would have a little nourishment before teaching the class. Wanting to get set up, she put the lunch into her bag and hiked up to the amphitheater where the class was to be held. She taught her class, packed up her stuff, and headed home where she brought the bag in to the bedroom and dropped it on the floor near the chifferobe.

So here’s something interesting:

The female housefly can lay up to 500 eggs at one time, though she deposits each egg individually. The ideal incubation location for a housefly egg is in something warm and moist, such as manure…. [Or a sandwich.] The eggs gestate for 24 hours before the flies hatch.  

Once the egg hatches, the housefly emerges in its larval stage. It is also known as a maggot at this point. The maggot looks like a legless worm, with a pointed end (the mouth) and two spiracles (breathing holes) at the back end. Maggots eat continuously over a period of four to five days. [Especially if there’s a sandwich available, ‘cause everyone likes sandwiches.] Before their metamorphosis into the next stage of development, the maggots migrate to a drier, darker location. [Such as under a chifferobe.] 

At the start of the pupal stage, the fly is approximately 8 mms long. As the pupa ages, the pupal skin will change colors from yellow to red to brown, and then black. If temperature is optimal, the pupa matures in two to six days, though it can take up to 17 days in colder climates. [In case you’re wondering, it takes about 14 days in an air-conditioned bedroom.]  

When the housefly emerges from the pupal stage, it has attained full maturity and now looks like a fly. [Although it may appear to be an intoxicated zombie fly.] The adult housefly is ready to reproduce within five days of maturity…. [There’s a joke here, but this is a family blog, so I’ll refrain.]  

Most houseflies die within one month of maturing from the pupal stage. [Or within minutes of showing up in my bedroom.] They can die from cold, lack of food and old age. Humans can assist the process by application of insecticides and fly strips. [Also, flyswatters and vacuum cleaners.] To manage fly infestation, cover open sources of excrement or rotting vegetables, such as animal housing or compost bins. [Better yet: don’t bring those things into your bedroom!] Killing adult flies will not eliminate the source of contamination unless you remove any viable breeding grounds for the flies…. (http://www.ehow.com/about_6169737_life-cycle-houseflies.html)

For the love of Pete, I had to get that stupid sandwich out of my house. Out it went. I took the liberty of drenching the inside of the bag with bug spray, then tied it off in two other plastic bags, and put it in the garbage can outside. And then I resumed the attack. It took a long time, particularly since I was fighting the battle alone. Killing flies is one thing, but if there’s a show on Nickelodean, well, don’t bother me with trifles. There will be blood tonight!

By my count, I killed or sucked up over 160 flies that night. That doesn’t count the swarms of flies and their little pupa friends hanging out in Clorinda’s bag, nor does it account for any that were sucked out of the floor directly by the vacuum. [The real part of the vacuum, not the wand that was so Jedi in the one-on-one battles.] Clorinda, who conveniently was not home that Thursday night, said she killed another 40 or 50 the next day. That is WAY to high a number for my liking.

There is one silver lining to all this. This occurred the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. We went out of town over that weekend—in fact, I think we left Friday night. Had those little buggers decided to wait just 36 hours longer to, and I quote, “emerge from the pupal state,” we would have returned home to HUNDREDS OF FLIES IN OUR HOUSE. 

I think I would have pulled a Marien and just run away at that point.