I am learning to hate flies

I know God is all knowing and all powerful.  He created the heavens and the earth and all that lives upon it (and under it, etc).  All life was created to give Him glory.

But seriously?  Flies?  What purpose do they serve?  Besides annoying people?  Did God think to Himself “my people need something to take their anger out on.  I’ll give them these annoying insects and then make it incredibly difficult to kill them.”

(I’m not trying to question God, I know there is a purpose for them.  Food for frogs and spiders?  Dunno.)

We have a lot of flies down here.  And I’m told it will get worse once the dry season comes.  Goody.  Here are the major types I’ve been able to figure out:

1. The passive, “Nobody here but us chickens” flies – These guys just want to sit on your wall or ceiling and not do anything else.  Personally, my “favourite” of the flies.  You can’t hear them.  They’re not crawling all over that spill your one year old daughter made on the floor.  They just blend in.  You can also kill them pretty easily.  I actually think that these are the old flies that the group are putting in these places to distract me from the more evil ones

2. The active, “I will search out every speck of food or garbage” flies – Now these are the ones that start to get me upset.  I can’t blame them for too much; they’re just being flies.  I guess they like day old pineapple juice spills or 3-day old diaper (mmmmmmmmm).  Not my cup o’ tea (I also don’t like tea.  Another rant, another day)  You always see them crawling on your food.  I guess they allow you to find the dirt and get it cleaned; kind of like my mom when I was a teenager cleaning the bathroom downstairs.  (Wow Mom, all that yelling you did at me back then makes sense now!)  These ones require a little bit of stalking before killing them.  But it is possible.  Our walls and ceiling have plenty of chunks of these types because I smashed them so hard.  Our walls are now yellow with black specks.  yummy

3.  My least favourite.  The kamikaze, “there is no way you can focus on what you want to achieve” flies.  I actually think these flies are demon possessed.  They know when you are trying to read the Bible, pray or get a book report done (which is what I was just trying to do and then one of these set me off).  They don’t fly around looking for food scraps; they look for the nearest human and aim for their ears.  Or their face.  I am not kidding here, I have personally had at least one fly in each of my ears and one that went right for my eyes.  Luckily I was wearing my glasses.  Vicious little things.  After distracting you, they will start to fly all over the room, never stopping so you can swat at them.  And they are REALLY loud.  Like a lawnmower.  Not one of the gas powered ones, just a nice environmentally friendly electric one.  We don’t want to exaggerate here after all!  I think that these flies were actually #2’s and then they ate something they shouldn’t have.  Like a Coke spill (never happens in my house) or some uneaten candy (again, not in my house).  I guess we can look at them like a three year old who secretly drank a glass of pop without his parent’s knowledge and then gets violently hyper.  No one likes that kid.  No one.

I have a #3 in the apartment right now.  I can hear him, but I can’t see him.  Every once in a while he goes right for my head.  He has been flying around for 20 minutes now.  He is huge, but I will get him.  And then I will be able to sleep.  But not before then.

/RD