Shoo Fly

We are here to share this earth with creatures great and small. I get that. So when the fruit flies come in the Fall and hover around the kitchen compost bucket and the fruit bowl on the counter, I can deal for a while. It’s usually for a month or two and then the weather turns too cold for them.

 

They seemed to come back in January and February and that was baffling. We had a deal and they broke it. But on closer examination, these flies were larger. So my wife started doing some research and discovered that this was a new thing altogether—sewer flies. Coming up through the plumbing. This was not an appealing name or image. (Some call them drain flies, which is a little bit more palatable.) So thanks to the miracle of the internet, she started researching flypaper, fly traps, strange concoctions in bowls that are supposed to attract them and drown them. 

 

So now our opening greeting in the morning is, “What’s the body count?” And the bad news is “Hardly any.” And so my Buddhist notion of Buddha nature in all living beings and our aim for harmonious co-existence is running thin. Sometimes I just grab the flyswatter and go on a genocidal rampage, but to no avail. 

 

Why aren’t these flies following the Internet script and alighting on flypaper or drowning themselves in bowls? I can only come to one conclusion. The sewer flies in our house are more intelligent than average. I’m going to try to be proud of that.