hordeofflies

“HORDE” OF THE FLIES

One of the main things I remember growing up were the hordes of ubiquitous flies that were everywhere around our place! Some days they would be as thick in our kitchen as they were in the barn! When we were at someone else’s house, there seemed to be hardly any flies around. It wasn’t until years later that it finally occurred to me that the reason there were so many flies at our place was because we lived on a farm! One of my many talents is a keen insight on the obvious, but sometimes it takes awhile! Tim and I found amusing ways to deal with the fly problem. Sometimes we would take a dart gun, with the rubber suction darts, and get close enough to a fly without scaring it away, and shoot a dart at it and usually we would get a perfect hit and squash it under the suction cup! I think this was one activity that really honed my pistol shooting accuracy (at least at a very close range). One thing about this Tim and I recall is that AFTER we would squash a fly, we would then get ready for the next victim by LICKING the dart suction cup! I guess as a farm kids, we didn’t give doing something like that any 2^nd thought! One time we caught a toad, that we named “Squeaky”, and we would slowly move it close to a resting fly and “Squeaky” would all of a sudden “ZAP” it at lightening speed with it’s long toad tongue! We also perfected catching flies in our hand by positioning our hand on edge and slowly moving it toward a resting fly, then rapidly sweeping toward it, then clenching it in our hand. We would then decide of one of 2 options at this point. We would either throw the fly on the floor with great force resulting in the fly getting groggy from the sudden hit, or we would remove its wings and really make it sorry it had the unfortunate destiny to be born a lowly fly! On other occasions throughout “fly season,” we would be sent to Heckleman’s Sohio Station to purchase “Sohio Fly Spray.” The spray was then sprayed throughout the house, then we had to close up the house and STAY OUT for around half an hour or so. It later made me wonder just what kind of potent dangerous chemical(s) were in that stuff that made it mandatory that all “Humans and animals must leave the area to be treated”! I also recall the instructions stating. “Remove all food and cover all aquariums…” These days, if one were to find an old can of this stuff and use it NOW, the EPA and local Emergency Management Agency would probably barricade the whole area off and a large team of “White coverall clad respirator equipped people would cautiously enter the premises with large exhaust fans, etc., while trying to dodge the countless reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Dumont (heh, heh for you “old” folks), etc.! There’s no doubt, in my humble opinion, that people greatly “Overreact” to things that weren’t any big deal back in the “Old Days”. I mean, I absolutely do not suffer ANY ill effects today from being exposed to all those “fly sprays” we used to use in the 1950’s. I have all 10 fingers (7 on my right hand and 3 on my left).These days, my house is about 300 feet further from the old farm house, even though I still have a fly problem in the house, it’s not nearly as acute as it was in the farm house, and I don’t rue that at all!



	“HORDE” OF THE FLIES “HORDE” OF THE FLIES One of the main things I remember growing up were the hordes of ubiquitous flies that were everywhere around our place! Some days they would be as thick in our kitchen as they were in the barn! When we were at someone else’s house, there seemed to be hardly any flies around. It wasn’t until years later that it finally occurred to me that the reason there were so many flies at our place was because we lived on a farm! One of my many talents is a keen insight on the obvious, but sometimes it takes awhile! Tim and I found amusing ways to deal with the fly problem. Sometimes we would take a dart gun, with the rubber suction darts, and get close enough to a fly without scaring it away, and shoot a dart at it and usually we would get a perfect hit and squash it under the suction cup! I think this was one activity that really honed my pistol shooting accuracy (at least at a very close range). One thing about this Tim and I recall is that AFTER we would squash a fly, we would then get ready for the next victim by LICKING the dart suction cup! I guess as a farm kids, we didn’t give doing something like that any 2^nd thought! One time we caught a toad, that we named “Squeaky”, and we would slowly move it close to a resting fly and “Squeaky” would all of a sudden “ZAP” it at lightening speed with it’s long toad tongue! We also perfected catching flies in our hand by positioning our hand on edge and slowly moving it toward a resting fly, then rapidly sweeping toward it, then clenching it in our hand. We would then decide of one of 2 options at this point. We would either throw the fly on the floor with great force resulting in the fly getting groggy from the sudden hit, or we would remove its wings and really make it sorry it had the unfortunate destiny to be born a lowly fly! On other occasions throughout “fly season,” we would be sent to Heckleman’s Sohio Station to purchase “Sohio Fly Spray.” The spray was then sprayed throughout the house, then we had to close up the house and STAY OUT for around half an hour or so. It later made me wonder just what kind of potent dangerous chemical(s) were in that stuff that made it mandatory that all “Humans and animals must leave the area to be treated”! I also recall the instructions stating. “Remove all food and cover all aquariums…” These days, if one were to find an old can of this stuff and use it NOW, the EPA and local Emergency Management Agency would probably barricade the whole area off and a large team of “White coverall clad respirator equipped people would cautiously enter the premises with large exhaust fans, etc., while trying to dodge the countless reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Dumont (heh, heh for you “old” folks), etc.! There’s no doubt, in my humble opinion, that people greatly “Overreact” to things that weren’t any big deal back in the “Old Days”. I mean, I absolutely do not suffer ANY ill effects today from being exposed to all those “fly sprays” we used to use in the 1950’s. I have all 10 fingers (7 on my right hand and 3 on my left).These days, my house is about 300 feet further from the old farm house, even though I still have a fly problem in the house, it’s not nearly as acute as it was in the farm house, and I don’t rue that at all!