The Fly

Killing flies was a perfectly acceptable pastime when I was a kid. If we had a few spare minutes to fill in at Granny’s place on the weekend, we’d grab the swatter and go and lay waste on the back veranda until someone called us in for lunch. It was an analogue of Space Invaders I guess, but I also felt I was part of something larger.

(A great aunt had entertained me with the story of how Mao had attempted to rid China of pests by ordering that all comrades had to kill nine flies a day. I don’t know how accurate the detail of her story was - there was certainly a “Four Pests” policy during the 1950s where flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows were targeted. As young as I was, even I could see the problem with a plan that demands a set number of tiny corpses per citizen, per day. What happens as you approach the thin edge of the fly population-wedge? I saw an opportunity for an enterprising fly breeder right there. But, details aside, I was fascinated with the story of a monumental manual task being undertaken and achieved through consistent, tiny increments. When I was on the back veranda at my Grandmother’s, flattening flies, I was having a little run up to my own Great Leap Forward.)

At school on a hot summer afternoon, there was always something to do. ‘Fly on a leash’ was always good. I’ve told other adults about this and they don’t believe we used to do it, but we did, often, and I have witnesses.

What you did was lean forward and pull a hair out of Donna’s head. Her hair was perfect. Long, straight, good strength and owned by someone who wasn’t much of a squealer. Once the ruckus had died down, you’d tie a simple knot in the hair, close to one end, leaving the loop about a centimetre open. You’d then leave that on the desk in a position easy to get at but not easily blown away by the overhead fan.

Step two was to wait for a fly to land on the fleshy part of your leg, or the desk if you weren’t too heavy handed. I personally found them easier to stun if they were on something with a bit of give.

Once you had your stunned fly, you’d loop the knotted hair over its head, tighten it a little, stick the other end of the hair into some chewy and wait for the fly to come round. Hey presto - Fly on a leash. They’d fly around at the limit of the hair’s travel and when boredom set in, you’d pull the knot all the way tight and the fly’s head would fall off. Hey presto – Ex-fly on a leash. You could even re-use the hair.

I reminisce about this delightful trick because I am wondering if we aren’t reaping the whirlwind. Millions of Aussie kids, over decades, casually swatting at flies have been positively selecting the fly population for flies that are faster, smarter, harder and less easily put on a leash. Last night, I did battle with a fly that was nothing short of an evil genius.

He started bugging us around dinner time. He landed on everything we didn’t want him to, and nothing we could hit him on. Delicate vase lips or the top of the chicken. You don’t want to swat the fly when it is on the top of the chicken. He wouldn’t shoo away, either. Tip of the wine glass. Oh how I’d love to smash down on that with the palm of justice. I went and got the fly swatter. I was going to smack him out of the air with my patented two-inch-backhand-of-death. That was when he decided to only fly against dark backgrounds.

Usually in the hunt for a fly that has caused you grief and needs some revenge meted out on it, you can reliably go to a window and just wait for it to bat around the closed half and you can swat it at your leisure. New, Uber-Fly didn’t do windows.

He also didn’t do that thing where the fly is flying in a set volume of air. The old style flies didn’t necessarily fly to a pattern, but they would settle into a defined volume for a bit and you could sort of focus on one part of it and wait for the insect to fly into your kill zone. New, Mega-Fly does high-speed, unpredictable, curving runs that can take in a couple of rooms and a hallway. He seems to get more points for getting really close to a human’s ear during each pass, as well. He was un-swattable.

Like all good guerrillas, he ramped up the harassment once it was bedtime. The only room of the house with a light on attracted him and high-speed passes over the bridges of Emergency Contact’s and my noses were the order of proceedings. This got worse when all major lights were turned off and the only source of illumination was my tiny Kindle light. It casts a cone of light a hand span long and half as wide. Super-Fly took that as an invitation to do some hyper-fast, close-quarters combat flying, and, every now and then, landing in my ear or peeking over the edge of my book to look at me just inside the cone of light. Turning over to change the environment and perhaps offer some other way of dissuading the bastard, he decided to keep landing on EC’s pillow. Even I won’t squish a fly on her pillow. He’d land, look at me for a bit, then fly off into the darkness and line up another attack run.

Near midnight, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, king of the primates, the upright ape capable of abstract thought, introspection, language and problem solving, was reduced to shining a light into the corner of the darkened room, waiting for the approaching buzz from over the shoulder and spraying a light cloud of insect poison into a volume of air the Ultra-Fly was going to hopefully fly into. Third go and he did catch a dose… and then disappeared.

This morning I got up to find him dead in a little puddle in the shower. He’d even had the presence of mind to try and rinse the poisons off himself before he finally succumbed.

He was a worthy adversary and I salute him.


This is the new fly and we are in trouble.