Lord of the Flies

A couple of weeks ago, a pesky (aren’t they all) fly entered Life in the Boomer Lane’s house. LBL loves all living creatures. She makes an exception for mosquitoes and flies. She yelled to Now Husband to kill the fly. Now Husband rushed into the room holding a can of insect spray and proceeded to kill the fly and come fairly close to choking LBL to death.

A civilized discussion ensued, in which LBL accused Now Husband of attempted manslaughter and Now Husband, in turn, showed LBL the can which clearly said “Safe for Humans.” LBL accused the can of having a fake label. The result was a truce, of sorts. The can was put away.  The fly swatter was retrieved from the basement.

The next day, another fly appeared. LBL declared that they had a fly problem. Now Husband countered with it being a door-left-open problem. But he used the fly swatter, in place of the spray can, and so LBL contented herself with counting this a victory.

Over the course of the week, one fly appeared each day, and Now Husband was forced to admit that there was a problem.  LBL, smug in her victory, was still puzzled over this one-fly-per-day event. Was this a fly thing, in addition to an ant thing?  She knew ants typically sent out one scout to assess the lay of the land. She had never given flies such credit.

LBL always assumed flies were rather far down on the intelligence scale of insects. They were quite talented in finding their way into houses, even under the most challenging of circumstances (a door left open for two seconds, a minute opening created by a screen not fitting tightly against a window frame). But, once in, said fly would spend all of its time bashing against windows or anything it deemed to be a window (lamp, TV screen) and wouldn’t notice opened windows or doors and LBL frantically waving it toward these. In other words, the fly’s brain worked in only one direction.

But, was there actually a Lord of the Flies who controlled them?  And was there a method to the madness of a one-fly-per-day strategy?  LBL thought a lot about this as the days went by.

Then, one day, a fly started buzzing around LBL’s head as she sat in front of her computer. LBL had already noticed that her head seemed to be a favored target dictated by the Lord of the Flies (She has started to sleep with her sheet pulled over her head). She shrieked. And Now Husband, who happened to be standing close by, reached out and took care of the problem.

When LBL had dreamed of her perfect man, she considered many characteristics: humor, intelligence, integrity being among the top ones. Luckily for her, both Then and Now Husbands posessed all three. In addition, Now Husband had now demonstrated the ability to kill flies with his bare hands, when the flies were in mid-air. It was akin to already being in love with someone when, one day, the person went into the attic and came down with a never-seen-before guitar and announced, “Oh, here is my guitar from when I was in that band.” And then said person would sit down and start playing old rock music.

LBL was so enraptured, she forget momentarily that she had planned to call a pest control company.  She asked Now Husband if he would be willing to kill all future flies like that. He directed her to the phone to call the pest control company.  The company, now in summer mode, dealing with any number of flying and/or crawling home invaders couldn’t be there until the following week.

Then, as if the Lord of the Flies knew what was about to happen and was pissed off about the phone call, he started releasing several flies at once. After two days, there were five flies in the house at the same time. The swatter was taking a beating.

Now Husband went into his I’m-going-to-get-smart-on-this mode.  He canvassed the house and announced that all of the flies were coming from the basement. He asked LBL if she needed to go down there for anything within the next 12 hours. The basement, although akin to a medieval dungeon, did have the washer and dryer. LBL said she would stay away. Now Husband grabbed the spray can and ran down the basement steps. After awhile, LBL could smell the fumes even on the first floor.

Miraculously, no flies appeared the following day.  Now Husband had vanquished them, at least for the time being. The pest control company is due to arrive today and will no doubt do their own thing. But LBL secretly knows that in the Game of Thrones for control of the flies, she was married to the victor.