How can one fly in the house be so aggravating?

Dude, right?

Last summer I lived in an apartment with two roommates and I was kind of the only one who bothered to take care of the place. We developed a fly problem and it was obnoxious af. I ended up with a nightly ritual that is funny in hindsight but aggravating as hell at the time: leading the fly parade.

Every night once it was dark I turned off all the lights in the apartment, plugged my desk lamp into an extension cord, turned it on and walked around the apartment, drawing all the flies towards me. They’d follow the light I was carrying and I would walk right out the back door and take them with me.

It felt pretty friggin silly.

Having a cat in the house makes it a lot better though. I remember, as a kid, watching my cats leap and twist in the air trying to catch flies. So funny. If you’re really lucky, too, they might just kill it for you.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the damn thing wouldn’t follow you around like a dog. One fly becomes my best pal. I want to get a second one so the first one wouldn’t be hanging out with me.

@canidmajor Yes, it seems to be in every room I’m in.

It’s in their design specs.

They’re God’s way of making sure we want to go to heaven.

Or they’re what social boors are reincarnated as.

Or they’re sent by the universe to make us appreciate a room without a fly in it.

Or there’s really a different fly in every room. It’s betting that you can’t actually recognize its little face. If you looked closely, though, you would see that it resembles Vincent Price.

A friend of mine has one of those fly swatters that has an electrical charge of some sort? I think he said it’s big like a tennis racket so you don’t miss and you can swing at the fly in the air. Awww, I hate killing things, but sometimes you have no choice.

Leave a light on in a room where you see the fly, then hold your breath and go to your bedroom and close the door. Hopefully, he stays by the light in the other room. That’s what I used to do when a horse fly would get in and I couldn’t get it out. They bite! It was more than annoying, I was afraid it would bite me in the middle of the night.

I’m aces with a fly swatter.
Grab the swatter, go into a smaller room, and close the door. Take your book into the bathroom and wait for it to join you. You now have the upper hand.

Those damned not-lady-bugs bother me far worse. All my ceiling lights are down bulbs. I go in the bedroom and lay across the bed to read. “Ting!” “Ting!” “Ting!” throwing itself against the light-bulbs. They stink like the devil if you crush them.
I frequently comment that we need a TV light. We always had one on at night when I was a kid and if you looked down into them there was always ½ cup+ of fried critters.

Want a handy not-lady-bug collection tip? A pop or juice bottle and a small step if you need on to reach the ceiling. Leave one ceiling light on central to the house. Every now and then go collect the bugs off the ceiling by tapping the opening over the bug. They fly down, and into the bottle. Rest and repeat and you’ll eventually have them all. Well, all but the one napping in the bedroom waiting to “Ting!” the light when you want to read.

You can put a bit of water with a few drops of dish liquid in the bottle so you don’t have to deal with them trying to get out when you un-cap for the latest victim.

@Jeruba, gee, thanks, now I’ll be creeped out for awhile…

As has been posted i.e. previously, you become their favorite landing and launching pad.

I spray them with rubbing alcohol: that way I avoid a filthy mess and instead have a very sanitized corpse which I can dispose of at my convenience.

Back in 1992, I had a swarm of them in my house. I dealt with that by sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner, regardless of whether they were airborne or landed.

Was the swarm of flies latecomers? I just learned of these in the past year, @Brian1946.

@ibstubro

I don’t think it was.

I didn’t look at them closely enough to determine their species, and as I recall, this happened in June.

I think because they seem to have a tendency to invite friends over without asking.

@rojo No this is just Joe all on his ownio. He’s been my roommmate for about a week.

Well, If he has been there long enough to be named then it is too late to get rid of him.

Well, I was married to my Ex for nearly 40 years and got rid of him! :-P

You can name it uninvited_central.

So, you have a couple more weeks to bond with Joe before gravity wins.

I kicked him out of my bedroom last night. I lead such an exciting life!

Yes, a fly in the house is annoying, and I keep a swatter upstairs and one downstairs just in case. But it’s nowhere near as maddening to me as being awakened from a deep sleep at 2:30 a.m. (as I was last night) by a car idling car in front of my house with its radio or CD player blaring.

In desperation, I screamed out the window “Turn off your &%$# radio, people are trying to sleep!!!” The radio went off, but the car continued to idle for another 10 minutes. I finally got back to sleep half an hour later… and then dreamed I was telling someone about the incident the rest of the night. Mmmm, maybe I’m still dreaming.

Joe. Ok, then, he’s yours.

Anybody else remember the drama of George the fly?

http://www.fluther.com/45346/should-i-kill-it/

Joe’s actually been quiet today. Maybe he got offended when I kicked him out of bed.

You hurt his feelings, but really, he needs to understand that No means No.

@canidmajor He did say as he was leaving, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

Leave the light on, @janbb.

He’s BAAACCCKK!

Does he know that he now has a fan club? He’ll probably appreciate that he’s so popular.

The club might be more effective than a fan.

^ nicely, done, Little Penguin, nicely done! :-D

Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?

Careful, @janbb, you’ll start another wildly controversial thread about song lyrics! ;-)