Flies, a rant

[Guest]

Not flies in camp, although I am not fond of them, especially those dang stable fly ankle biters. I watched one of those land on a shoe I had just sprayed with DEET, thinking “Ha, you won’t be liking that”. The little crap bit me through the DEET wet shoe while I watched.

No, flies in my shop. Every year, worse in late summer. We live next to a cow pasture, which means lots of cow patties over the course of a summer, and lots of flies. I have a screen door entrance to the shop, but when I bring a boat in or out I have to open the big garage doors.

I opened that garage door, briefly, a couple days ago to bring a canoe in and have been swatting flies ever since. I am up to four fly swatters in the shop, one at my desk, one on each bench and one near the door. I have killed at least 50 flies in the past couple of days and have finally reduced the resident fly population to near zero.

And crap, I need to take that canoe out and bring one another in. Here we go again.

I have tried the flypaper thing and it was variably effective. Variably; it did have some flies stuck to it, but I also managed to get it stuck to the wall when I turned the large shop fan on, and get it stuck to boxes (or my arm) while taking something off a high shelf. There is just no obscure non-work area or storage corner to hang fly paper.

At least the shop spiders are being well fed; I toss the less-smushed fly carcasses into their webs.

Also, same worst at this time of year, shop crickets. When I first come into the shop, usually in the pre-dawn hours, there is an absolute cacophony of crickets chirping. Lights on, crickets instantly off.

Very well fed spiders in my shop.

 

[stripperguy]

Haha,
Reminds me of the first house that MDB and I built. We were just 21 years old, newly married and finishing the house we started a year before.
As soon as we closed in the framing, there were tons of flies...tons. I asked all of my neighbors, both of them (we built on a mountain top in a very rural area) and they said "yeah, those are cluster flies".
Never heard of cluster flies before...we had hundreds stuck in our walls, gathered in corners, grouped on windows, every possible nook and cranny.
I removed some temporary sheathing after the 1st winter, to finally install a man door in the garage. As I removed the temporary framing, about 300 of the comatose little turds dropped down my back and into my shirt. With my body heat, about half of them woke from their stupor, and proceeded to buzz about under my T shirt and in my tighty whities!!

Yeah, I still remember it llike it was yesterday.

 

[alsg]

Extremely controversial topic, Mike. I expect the fly lobby will be contacting you shortly.

 

[Guest]

As I removed the temporary framing, about 300 of the comatose little turds dropped down my back and into my shirt. With my body heat, about half of them woke from their stupor, and proceeded to buzz about under my T shirt and in my tighty whities!!

Yeah, I still remember it llike it was yesterday.

When I was a lad and into my early teens, spending every available hour wandering in the woods, I collected and identified bird nests. Only taken in late fall and winter, but still quite illegal. They were displayed in glass fronted cabinets, with proper field collection notes and specie ID. Some were hard to come by; I succeeded in begging a lineman in a bucket truck to get me an Oriole’s nest, dangling typically far out of reach on high tiny branches.

(BTW, those bird nests and display cases eventually went to a University Ornithology collection)

That is a long preamble to an unfortunate tale of Vespideal heat awakening. As an idiot 6 year old I thought I might add other interesting nests taken in the winter to my growing collection. The beautiful paper wasp nest I brought home proved an unwise choice once it warmed up.

That still was not the most pissed I ever saw my father. I had a penchant, even as a toddler, for ropes and knots. Playing with a long hank of rope in the garage one evening I did some youthful macramé.

Around the mower, and the tiller, and the cement mixer. And finally tied to the bumper of my father’s Jeep. Even as a toddler apparently I could tie good knots. Man was he surprised when he pulled out of the garage to go to work the next morning.

 

[Bothwell Voyageur]

The harvest is mostly in here so they are spreading manure from the cow barns nearby. Along with the smell that means flies and as we have been renovating the doors have been open as various folk come and go.So we have flies in the house.

I am ever impressed at how efficient a fly swatter is though I am convinced some of the blighters feign death and revive when my back is turned if I don't pick them up and wash them down the plug hole.

 

[DanG]

The beautiful paper wasp nest I brought home proved an unwise choice once it warmed up.

Was hunting the Blue Ridge a few winters ago when I came across a nice hornets' nest about ten feet up a sapling. My wife is a science teacher and appreciates stuff like that, so I resolved to get it. Shinnied up and started working at the branch with the bone saw blade on my knife. I was almost through the branch when I looked over at the nest and saw a couple hornets staggering around on top. Thank all gods the temperature wasn't any lower because then I'd have toted it down the mountain to my SUV and tossed it in the back and the hornets would have woken up on I-66 at about Milepost 40.

 

[DanOver]

Mike,
I am with the firm Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. As a representative of these flies, I must inform they feel they have been treated unfairly and we demand you quit the premises and allow them access. # MeFlew.

 

[Guest]

Extremely controversial topic, Mike. I expect the fly lobby will be contacting you shortly.

I have engaged the flies in lengthy negotiations and have come to understand the error of my ways. After undergoing hours of implicit bias retraining I now appreciate how the micro-aggression of even a missed smack with the flyswatter has damaged their sense of self-worth.

I now accept that this tyranny must end. I have provided species-specific Safe Spaces for the flies, so that each may fulfill their unique potential, and have posted a list of forbidden trigger warning words on the shop wall as a reminder to mend my unenlightened ways.

Instead of actually working in the shop I now spend my days practicing Omphaloskepsis while softly chanting Kumflya My Lord, Kumflya.

 

[yellowcanoe]

I’m busy constructing a rodent drowning device
full out war
dont tell me they’re cute

key is that they cannot get out
and tire
tgere is an aqua squirrel swim
team on the lake so this might not work

 

[Guest]

I’m busy constructing a rodent drowning device
full out war
dont tell me they’re cute

key is that they cannot get out
and tire

5 gallon bucket half full of water, with a center baited length of slippery rolling PVC pipe, slipped though a dowel on top?

Those do work. It helps if you lay a / board from the floor to the lip of the bucket. And check them daily, things get bloated ugly fast.

Sometimes you don’t even need the PVC pipe or bait.

http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/CooperMcCrea/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNDE2NDcxMjE=/?ref=1

 

[yellowcanoe]

What has worked for my neighbors is a board to the lid of a five gallon bucket partially filled with water
there is a hole in the lid. They can see to the water which has glorious sunflower seeds floating on top and they go for the seed. A teaser trail of seed goes up the board
we have an off duty bucket with toilet seat.
Maybe your method and mine has application for campsite pests?

 

[Steve in Idaho]

YC and others - do a search on YT for "walk the plank mouse trap". Made one for my daughter. It works realy well.

Flies....About 35 years ago, I owned a rental house. While out of town for a couple months, the renters vacated, but left some meat in the freezer with the freezer unplugged and door open. I suppose they thought they were doing me a favor in defrosting the thing. When I came by to check on the rental, I could see from two blocks away that the big front windows were crawling with something. The close up view was frightening.....millions of flies. I an to the hardware store and bought an aerosol can labeled "bug bomb". Activated it and tossed it in the door (like a hand grenade)...shut the door and left for a day. IIRC, the fly carcasses filled half a standard trash can. :O

A couple years later, I was looking at spending boring weekend in eastern Kansas, camped next to grain silos. A lot of grain was spilled on the ground, where rain had soakedd it. That draws a lot of flies. One of the crew (who we all disliked) had left an air pistol in our living quarters, and it didn't take long for us to start experimenting. Scores of flies died that weekend by "salt injection". We got good enough that we were not just shooting them off the ceiling, but also got a lot of pass-shooting kills. I wish I had the foresight to patent the idea.

Now, you too, Mike, can have your very own.....

 

[yellowcanoe]

Thanks Steve.. Ordered with points a Walk the Plank for the garage.. Rodents are making themselves at home in the cars.
While my fly problem is limited to when we are camping in the travel trailer somehow I think a Salt Gun is counterproductive as then have to clean the salt off the bed the floor the table etc.

 

[Odyssey]

Having grown up next door to a dairy and pig farm you'd think I got used to flies a long time ago. But I never have. There is something mind bending irritating about having a little black hairy beast buzzing you every so often as it cruises through the kitchen into the hall and doing laps around the living room. And then finding you again to land on just to piss you off. Growing up I had an uncle "from the city" who would spend an entire weekend walking around the house outdoors with fly swatter in hand taking aim and taking pleasure from killing house flies. I hinted once that he never would catch up, there was a never ending supply from just up the lane. Didn't faze him. Pretty sure the grimace he gave was actually a sadistic satisfied grin. And I can still hear my mom's voice "Hurry up and shut the door..either you're in or you're out!! Don't let the flies in!!" But these days we are mostly pestered by fruit flies in the kitchen. The odd house fly I can dispatch with anger and disgust, but the tiny Drosophila is somewhere between fairy dust and biblical plague floating around the cabinets and countertops like wandering dust motes. Kinda cute but darned difficult to eradicate. Doesn't help that we've been in the middle of fruit season for some time now, canning/freezing the seasonal harvest (not all ours). Yes I have a trap for just such an occasion but can't be bothered to retrieve it from the shed at the bottom of the yard. I do have a soft spot for them I must admit. Their tiny fecund realm became surreal when studying Genetics 101 in Uni. Cross breeding them for colour and physiology was cool. Out of control breeding them in my kitchen is far less cool.

 

[Guest]

I will make, or order, a Walk the Plank mousetrap as well, and try a head to head against other DIY drowning bucket designs. It is coming up on the time for mice to move inside. If it works better than the DIY versions I’ll make another for the Tortoise Reserve and maybe one for friend’s mouse ridden cabin.

It is interesting that “To Build a Better Mousetrap” has been a challenge for a hundred years or more. The familiar and still effective spring loaded snap trap design has been around little changed since at least 1903.

Sticky pads work, especially if baited in the center with a dab of peanut butter (I add a few crumbs of fried bacon, on an exterminator friend’s recommendation), but the stuck-and-suffering cruelty is off putting. As is placing the live mouse, struggling stuck to the pad, in a plastic bag and stepping on it for a quick death. Wear thick soles; that crunch of skull and bones goes straight to the feels and stays there.

I don’t know that drowning is any less cruel or karma damaging than a critter suck struggling to a glue trap, but at least bones aren’t cracking underfoot, and I don’t have to witness the last desperate throes.

During a wholesale reorganization a few weeks ago I found a sticky pad trap that had gone missing in the basement. It had the desiccated remains of a 12 inch long black snake stuck to it. I felt horrible; I had seen him down there and wished him a long and well satiated life. That may have done it for sticky pad use for me.

BTW, about the shop flies; I opened the garage doors one morning when the shop was still overnight cool, and almost all of the remaining flies vacated on their own. Maybe they just learned to fear Pissed-Off SwatterMan.

Not that it matters, the newest pestilence has begun to arrive, brown marmorated stinkbugs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_marmorated_stink_bug

In a couple weeks there will be thousands of them on the sunny side of the house each afternoon, looking to get in for the winter. Get inside they can, and will, squeezing flat-bodied through the slenderest of openings in screens and windows.

Ah, invasive stink bugs. There’s nothing like waking up at 2am to the that perhaps most annoying of insect buzzes, the loud BBZZUULLBZZZ of a barely kept airborne Brown Marmorated Stink bug. Especially when one tangles in your beard, you swat it away and it ends up somewhere WTF undiscoverable in the blankets.

You really don’t want crush one under the blanket or pillow. Or, trust me on this, smush one inside a Four-in-Hand knot inside a tie as you leave for work, and wonder for hours why the heck everything, right under your nose, reeks of stinkbug.

We have Rock Snot Didymo and New Zealand Mud snails in my homeriver, and Giant Hogweed in the county, an invasive plant that will burn the skin like acid or blind the unwary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum

And Aedes aegypti (Asian Tiger mosquitoes, a known vector of yellow fever, West Nile virus, St. Louis and LaCrosse encephalitis). And Aedes albopictus, another known disease vector. Lions and tigers and bears my arse. It’s the mosquitos that will get you.

Still, no invasive so far has been as personally every day impactful as those freaking stinkbugs.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Sticky pads work, especially if baited in the center with a dab of peanut butter (I add a few crumbs of fried bacon, on an exterminator friend’s recommendation), but the stuck-and-suffering cruelty is off putting. As is placing the live mouse, struggling stuck to the pad, in a plastic bag and stepping on it for a quick death. Wear thick soles; that crunch of skull and bones goes straight to the feels and stays there.

Ah yes....I took photography as an elective in high school. I still have a vivid memory of stepping back from the enlarger in the darkroom (red light) and feeling that crunch under my heel. The white light on when I was done with the project at hand revealed one flat mouse. That's one unlucky rodent.