Invasion of the flies!

I do believe that I posted my blog to early the other night. Or maybe perhaps I jinxed what should have been a normal evening.

After dinner I was sitting downstairs relaxing typing up my blog and watching Dance Machine. By the way it was the stupidest show I have ever seen, not that I couldn't tell that from the beginning, but it was like a train wreck, you just had to watch. Once I finished up I decided to take my contacts out my eyes were burning something terrible.

I went upstairs and turned on the bedroom light. I noticed that the window wasn't t open and it was hot up there (we don't have air conditioning), so I opened it. I headed to the bathroom and turned on the light and heard a buzzing noise. It was the buzz of a fly. I took a peak around and didn't see anything and continued to head into the bathroom. All of a sudden 'zoom,' straight over my head. The fly landed on the wall. I stepped a little closer to it, Jesus Christ it was HUGE. This had to be the biggest fly I have every seen. Suddenly a second fly comes swooping in and I duck. Bugs gross me out! I shudder from the thought of them landing on me and quickly shut the bathroom door.

I head downstairs to get my big game hunter husband. "There are two enormous flies in the bathroom, you have to go kill them now," I exclaimed! He just looks at me and shakes his head getting up from the couch and heading upstairs. I told him that I have seen horse flies before and these things were way bigger then those. He just chuckled and grabbed a piece of newspaper and started to roll it up. I stepped into the bedroom and pointing at the bathroom door I cringed, "They're in there."

Jonathan bravely opened up the bathroom door and prepared for battle. "Jesus Christ," he exclaimed, "these things are huge." I smiled with satisfaction knowing that I had not exaggerated on their sheer size. He swatted at the flies killing them both. Suddenly another fly zoomed past me into the bathroom. Another then landed on the tall floor lamp to my right. I screamed. "Where the hell are they coming from," Jonathan asked. "The hell if I know," I replied. Another came followed by yet another. Jonathan shut the bathroom door to keep them trapped inside while he tried to kill them as I searched the room to try and find where they might be coming from. I headed to the open window and noticed five more crawling around on the screen. I quickly slammed the window shut. "There are five more trapped in the window," I yelled to Jonathan. I kept hearing slap after slap.

As I watched 3 or 4 more zoom around the bedroom I decided that this was just a little too creepy for me and exited the bedroom quickly shutting the door behind me. I would leave this unexplainable situation for Jonathan right now. I scurried downstairs and turned on our laptop to try and see if maybe we could have had a nest in the house that we did not know about. I googled flies and came up with a website that showed close up pictures of every kind of fly imaginable. I scrolled quickly through the pictures until at last I found them! Tachinids! These large flies would require a host in order to reproduce, which was usually a moth or butterfly. The larvae would then hatch inside the host killing it and eventually emerging as a full grown, giant, hairy, ugly ass tachinid fly. Now that I thought about it we had recently found a couple of dead moths upstairs. I have the lovely habit of leaving the doors wide open in the house to help cool things off, but I am sure this had nothing to do with it (or so I told myself).

I swiftly ran upstairs to let Jonathan in on my findings. He informed me that he had killed 17 now! I asked if he had any of the bodies left, I wanted to confirm the visual on the computer that I expected to be the culprit. He shook his head no, he had flushed them all down the toilet. Suddenly another buzz and then another. Two more had flown into the bathroom. Are you kidding me?? That now brought the total 19. Jonathan emerged from the bathroom with the beaten fly on his now weary piece of newspaper. Ah ha! It was exactly what was shown in the picture. Gross! I immediately decided that the entire bedroom and bathroom needed to be scrubbed (I didn't care if it was 11pm or not.)

We stopped and listened in the room. Had we finally managed to kill them all? Zoom! Nope, one last nasty little bugger was left. Jonathan went after it and smashed it against the wall. It was finally over. 20 flies later our room was bug free and getting scrubbed from floor to ceiling. We weren't taking any chances.

We spend the remainder of our night dusting, scrubbing, sweeping and changing sheets. At midnight we finally got the chance to plop down in bed. Ahh peace and quiet and a squeaky clean room. We never did find the exact culprit of the flies. There were never any signs of them aging in the home. Just a sudden appearance of them and a labored disappearing battle to kill them. Poor Gemi was so traumatized by this, I had left her trapped in the bedroom while Jonathan ran around swatting endlessly at things. Perhaps I will learn my lesson and keep the doors shut, but I doubt it, after all I do enjoy the breeze.