I hate flies.

While entymology is a hobby, this doesn't make me an all-inclusive fan of all insects. Flies, cockroaches, and mosquitoes I could live without.

Living in Texas, I've spent a lot of time killing flies, and the desire to eradicate them has grown into a pastime. Ever since I was a little kid I've had a knack for killing them. I typically possess normal reflexes, however I've astounded myself many times by snatching a passing fly right out of the air as it passed through my periphery vision. Especially on the right side. As I grew more serious about fly killing, I started out being quite unskilled in my hobby. I'd often ineffectually chase them around with a fly swatter. Actually I don't think I've ever owned a real fly swatter, but instead used a rolled up news paper or magazine or towel. After reading this, hopefully the your own hours of giving chase will be no more or at least, minimized and your victories will be many.

Like any enemy, the best way to achieve their defeat is to study them and find their weaknesses. Flies' strength comes through their ability to produce and in a seemingly unending front, they are militarily very unsophisticated and have numerous weaknesses which you can exploit.

As you may have noticed, files are pretty slow when the ambient temperatures are low. Unlike our superior metabolism which generates our own body heat and keeps our muscles ready to fight, flies are cold-blooded and rely on the environment to ready their fight or flight response. Unfortunately it can get expensive air conditioning the battlefield down to a sufficient temp to slow them down, and when outdoor temps drop, so do the flies making them hard to locate. If you’re lucky enough to have a fly around while the temps are low then you’ll be the sure victor in a less than thrilling combat.

Flies have terrible night vision. Corralling one in a room in the evening makes for easy dispatch. One of my favorite weapons in my arsenal is the light switch dimmer. Dimmers allow me to have a pre-bedtime victory without suffering my own burst of battle time adrenaline, allowing me to easily get slip into a post triumph slumber. Locate the fly, dim the lights to a level where you can just make out their location and calmly pinch them from existence.

Due to their poor night vision, flies are easily lured to your battleground of choice. Upon discovering a fly in the house I typically turn off all the lights with the exception one room, typically the bathroom. Then I wait a few minutes and let the fly (or better yet for your kill count, flies) convene in the lighted room to which they are innately attracted by their drive to lengthen their breeding and battling day. Then, I simply close the door, dim the lights and snuff them out. If I’m lucky / unlucky enough to have one of those days when there are many flies in the house, I sometimes speed up my victory by employing the vacuum to bag them from existence in a dusty demise.

Victory can be elusive when it comes to such a prolific foe. Therefore, in my later years of hunting, I moved closer to the source rather than simply reacting to an invasion. I learned this by studying the Bush administration’s keen response to Saudi terrorists by attacking them right at their home in Iraq.

Moving any battle with a diurnal enemy to the outdoors means expanding your technical superiority on the battle field. Analogous of the single lighted room in an otherwise dark house I’ve introduced an effective daytime fly attractant to corral them to one outside location, chickens. If you’re ready to move your own conquest to the outdoors it’s also time you seriously consider how you will house the requisite livestock. Chicken manure is and excellent fly attractant. By rounding up the neighborhood fly population in to my chicken ghetto I’ve outwitted them and taken control of the number of places they have to set down their eggs. Taking out many egg laden adults before they effectively breed is key to mass population control. In the chicken yard I’ve installed a commercial fly trap. Through the use of this trap my kill numbers have gone up nearly 5 orders of magnitude. About once a week, during the summer months, I empty the trap’s tens of thousands of conquered souls into a mass grave where, instead of ever breeding or invading my home, they feed the plants of my landscape.