#catching flies

LOOK AT THE PICTURE I JUST STUMBLED ACROSS

I AM WHEEZING

If you saw the photo dump from Susie's post, this is the music she used. As she said on the reply from the composer's comment, it's from Toto's playlist.

I never had much of a problem with flies entering my room; in the city there's just not as many, or not as many close to my windows. But in my current place, flies keep entering every single time I open a window, I assume it's because the neighbours have some animals in their backyard, and animals attract flies.

I've been wondering if the flies are getting in because I have a little bowl of kitchen waste that might be attractive to them, and there's a bowl of apples, and sometimes some dishes in the sink have crumbs of food on them, from what I've read it's why flies get attracted to a place. However this seems to not be the case; the flies are specifically attracted to me. They are landing, on my face, on my arms, on my shoulders, on my nose, trying to copulate directly on my cheek. I've never seen this fly behaviour before, I don't know what is up with them.

Anyway, I got annoyed, and looked up how to get rid of flies, the first advice I found was to put basil in there because flies dislike the smell of basil! I have a pot of basil directly on the window where they're coming from. So that was debunked in advance, basil did nothing. I disliked all the other options, and I'm not about to kill flies, so I went back to the old and tested method – catching flies in my fist and throwing them outside the front door.

Now if you've never tried to catch a fly with your hand, you might think that flies are slightly faster than your hand and easily evade your attempt to swing at them while they hold still – and yes, in most cases if you aim your opened hand in front of a standing fly and swing it, they manage to fly just above it and sneer at you as they fly away.

But you gotta count that in! If you assume the fly is going to be just a little bit quicker, and fly above your reach, you aim your hand upwards. You direct your hand not towards the fly's back, but towards her face, so when she does fly up, she's flying into your hand. And then aim above the place you think she's going to fly, she's always gonna be a little faster. And that's how you get her, by using your brain to calculate where she's going to fly.

I've had a great time catching flies! After a two day practice, I could catch most of them on the first try, sometimes even mid-flight. I have them zooming angrily in my fist and then I throw them outside and they fly away into the world, mostly unscathed. It feels like a sport, spotting them and then tricking them into flying into your first just to throw them outside.

There's been a few cases of flies being smarter than me and tricking me to let them go. One of their is 'keeping it cool', which is after being caught in my fist, they just don't move. I don't feel them wiggling, zooming, squirming or otherwise touching my skin, so I assume I didn't catch it, and open my fist – upon which they fly away! The masterminds.

Another method they figured out to use was landing on my good hand! They noticed my left hand is sick and they realized it's safe to land on my right hand, I won't be able to catch them with my left. That is brainwork.

There's been the opposite of intelligence shown as well. In one case, I had just thrown out all flies but one, and I'm gearing up for a battle; she knows I just grabbed all of her friends and family, and threw them out in cold blood. She's gonna be wary, careful, evasive, smart. And what does she do. She lands directly on my face. While I'm out there, looming. One has to assume she's trying to avenge her outcasted tribe. She's going to land on my face for all of them. It seems to be their life mission.

After throwing out all flies I get to have a period of peace and quiet! I do have to repeat the process every single time I open the window, so fly-catching is the current sport activity I actively engage in. I think it's a great game, better than killing them because I don't have to deal with their blood or tiny corpses. They can be unsanitary elsewhere!

The Reason this blog was even created. If you want to see the rest of my work (and follow my far-more-active main blog) Follow this here link!

The following have been updated as of Dec 2023; so if its been a while go give it a read. I do plan on posting more the next few weeks!

Chapter One: Cruel and Unusual

Chapter Two: Weirdo Club

Chapter Three: Meeting of DOOM

Chapter Four: The Dreaded 'H' Word

Chapter Five: Stupid Obligated Backstory

Chapter Six: Disaster Breakfast

Chapter Seven: Look! A Filler Chapter Already

Chapter Eight: Imagination Gone Insane

Chapter Nine: (Don't) Meet Your Heroes

Chapter Ten: Stir the Pot

Chapter Eleven: House of Chaos

Chapter Twelve: EMP

Chapter Thirteen: Dark Revelations

Chapter Fourteen: Calm Before the Storm

Chapter Fifteen: Expo of the Bizarre

Chapter Sixteen: Reality is Subjective

Chapter Seventeen: Aliens May Exist

Chapter Eighteen: Bad idea turned Disasterrific

Chapter Nineteen: A Knife to the (Brain)

Chapter Twenty: Encounter of the (?) Kind

With The Hunger Games was on the trend again, I wanted to share my favorite posters from the movie series.