House flies

There is nothing more annoying than house flies. Yesterday, following the heavy rain, they arrived with a vengeance. Stephen hunted out the fly swat that we had put away last summer and quickly put it to use. Whack, and another critter bites the dust. We had had a few of the flies beforehand but nothing like the onslaught that greeted us yesterday. The weather was humid and skies overcast, the area not quite free of the heavy rain we had had the day before. For some reason, these conditions seem to bring out these flies.

I have always loathed flies and their maggots. As a child I remember the big blow flies that used to torment us on the farm. And I also remember possibly the worst job I had as a child and that was to pluck the wool off dead sheep for my father. Back in those days, wool was valuable and with sheep being shorn once a year, they always had a lot of wool on them in summer before shearing. We would head out on the farm with our sugar sack, find these stinkingly repulsive blown-up corpses and pluck the wool from them and place it in the sack. It was a disgusting job, and our clothes always stank where the sack had sat on our backs on the way home. Then there were the fly-ridden sheep. In my time as both a shed hand and a farmer, there was nothing worse than coming across a fly-blown animal. These had to be shorn, and all the maggots would land on the floor. As a shed hand it was my job to sweep those maggots down the porthole and carry the maggot laden wool out to the landing, thus separating it from the other wool. Yuk. Yuk and Yuk.

I do remember years ago when I worked as a nurse aide after leaving school. Maggots were used on a burn victim to clean out his wound. Still having the farming experiences fresh in my mind, I found this quite repulsive, though I am sure the maggots probably did a good job cleaning out the slough from the wound, which would have otherwise needed surgery to remove it.

And I have another memory too. I was staying at my boyfriend’s house one Christmas and his mother asked me to take a ham bone down to the rubbish dump. I couldn’t believe she was discarding this as it still had plenty of meat on it. This was a time when all hams were delicious. I couldn’t resist the temptation and happily chomped on the bone on may way to the dump, only to discover a pile of maggots on the other side of the bone as I tossed it away. If someone these days asks me to take something to the compost, I do as I am told, I have learned my lesson!

As I am writing this, one of these flies just has landed on my computer, and then on my arm, almost as if it is taunting me. I am just putting it out there, to all the other would-be pests. I do have a can of fly spray. As much as I don’t like chemicals, I will use it if I have to. You have been warned.