Fly Pheromones

It was a beautiful day outside and the boys took advantage of the weather by going out and naturally leaving the back door open. While making a nest of dinosaur eggs with all of my "garden border" rocks (see the Dinosaur movie by Disney to see what that looks like) the paleontologists failed to notice the fly armada that landed right next to our back door. On the count of tres, the ships sailed in and conquered the living room and kitchen in one synchronized buzz.

If you look close enough you can tell that those aren't people at all but flies dressed up like people. Look! He can't even get his mustache to stick!

While gathering the boys to come inside we all started noticing just how many flies were in the house and finally looked up to see that the armada had not lost any of it's ships and was poised and ready to be as strategically annoying as possible. Once we were all inside with the doors tightly secured the battle began. First we narrowed down the battle field by checking each room in the house and if no fly occupied it, the door was quickly shut and proclaimed off limits. It was thankfully just in the first two rooms that we had to fight for our sanity armed with a fly swatter and 3 kids with great eyesight.

I told Chris that maybe I should bring home some frogs instead of fly paper, then we could have 2 of the plagues in one night!

Of course, the family "why"-man (Douglas) had to ask why we had to kill the flies, then he had to know why they came in, and why there were so many. BECAUSE! There were a few more details and at the end of it all his ardor for fly rights died, morphing into a sharp shooter on the kill. While helping Reed and Issac point out the enemy for Chris, a.k.a. Lord of the Flies, armed with a 99 cent flyswatter, Douglas began spouting out tips on how to obtain better swatting techniques. Douglas was surprised at how easy it was for Chris to swat and kill and had to conclude that "maybe to flies, Fly Swatters are a legend. They don't believe in them, that's why they're so easy to hit." (In that observation there is potential for a spiritual analogy or a Confucius style quote).

Luckily, I had to go to my ward's book club and leave Chris with the 3 fly swatting experts and the lingering fly population. When I came home, armed with the "fly stick", Chris had managed to cut the group to half its size. By the way, that fly stick I bought has only managed to trap 2 flies and one of them is buzzing with all his might trying to get off and he just might make it, short a limb or two. All of this has put me in the mood to recommend Lord of the Flies to the book club, maybe? Or Not!

"The fly gun (or flygun), a derivative of the fly swatter, uses a spring-loaded plastic projectile to "swat" flies. Mounted on the projectile is a perforated circular disk which, according to advertising copy, "really does work" and "won't splat the fly".