Convention of Death

Our house is known to some as the Smith house.

To an entirely different group of people in the therapy world, it is known as Addison's house (probably a much more accurate description these days)

To the mailman our house is known as those people who never check their mail (hey, it's across a busy street...cut us some slack) 

To the neighbors it is known as the house that has the beautiful, lusciously green lawn that is almost always sporting the trendiest stripes and neatest edges (I'm married to a landscaper...I take the perks where I can get them)

To a different group belonging in an entirely separate species, our house is known as the HOT SPOT.

That species?

the fly

Apparently, every summer there is a fly convention where flies gather to discuss recent news, latest discoveries, tactics that work the best for dodging traps...and so on and so forth.

This convention even has a keynote speaker and name tags.

Invariably, every summer this convention is held at my house.

Lest you think I'm just a horrible housekeeper, when we bought the house in February (2009) the hardwood floors were all liberally covered with mass quantities of dead flies. Disgusting.

Aaron said that they built some sort of nest in the siding of the house and that's why were afflicted.

We replaced the siding with brand new, beautiful vinyl siding.

And the flies came back.

Thankfully, we are down to lower quantities of flies than ever, but with last week's heat wave and my inability to stand in my kitchen for longer than ten seconds at a time...unfortunately the convention was promoted to the 100th year anniversary gathering where all the flies in the state of Vermont came to check out this HOT SPOT and stay for a little sauna time.

And all of those big flies brought their fruit fly friends that gathered around the kitchen sink and leisurely snacked on any and every crumb of ANYTHING. ugh.

Last summer, my friend told me about this handy contraption that you can make to kill those pesky little flies. Last year, I tried it for the first time and had great success. I just found that it took time- a couple of weeks for those flies to be tempted in. But the wait was worth it as it soon cut the population down to a squashable amount.

Basically, you pour apple cider vinegar into an old jar. Tape a layer of paper over the top of the jar. Roll up another piece of paper and insert through the taped layer. Secure with tape so that the roll just falls short of the level of vinegar. The idea is, the fly will come in for a tasty snack of vinegar, but be unable to exit back through the roll. Genius, really. Last year it worked like a charm. Fingers are crossed for this summer...hopefully it wasn't included into the "what to avoid" handbook handed out at the convention.

Behold my fancy contraption:

Yes, I realize it's tacky beyond all reason, but I threw it together during one of those ten second stints in the kitchen that I referenced earlier.

Anyway, this year's death count so far? 1....soon to be many, many more.  

I left the label on so that they wouldn't see the floating bodies of their dead co-conventioners floating around.

I thought it was pretty considerate of me.

I'm sensing that one of the still existing flies is now writing a murder mystery about the disappearing convention guests.

Guess they should have thought of that before they picked the cranky pregnant lady's house to advertise as the HOT SPOT.

On a different note, you know who is becoming quite the little computer lover?

Chubbs is drawn to a computer like....a fly is to apple cider vinegar. Hmmmm. If I had the money I would totally buy her an ipad. Christmas list?

What is your secret for getting rid of flies in your house?

(and yes, I'm keeping all food put away and wiped down....they seem impervious to my clean ways)

(If any of of you are Fly Rights Activists. I humbly apologize for the offense. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.)