Evils of Fly Strips

Sometimes I wonder if I was cursed at birth, say, by the "Stupid Things Will Happen To You" Fairy. Because it never fails, stupid things happen to me with ridiculous frequency.

Recently we've had an influx of flies on the back porch, which follow you into the house to further annoy you into a maddening frenzy. In a sudden inspriation, I remembered we had some of those hanging fly strips left from last summer that were effective when we were working on the house, leaving the doors open and battling flies.

This is what happens when anyone else uses fly strips: A person unwinds the strip, hangs it up, and flies stick to the paper. Paper gets full of flies, person removes the fly strip to the trash. End of story.

This is what happens when I use fly strips: First, I unwound the strip and hung it up, satisfied that my job was done. I turned to go into the house, when a big gust of wind came up and *fwap*...blew the strip off the hook and right into my HAIR, wrapping around my forehead. I immediately went into self-defense mode, dancing around the porch and ripping at the strip, which HURT, because it's in my HAIR. As soon as I got one part unstuck, another part of the strip would find more hair. I could've called for help, but not only was Marden taking a nap, it wasn't really a position I wanted him to find me in. Eventually I worked the disgusting strip out, and had to work on getting my hair clean of the sticky yellow goo that came off the strip and lodged into my hair and on my face. Little known fact, cooking oil dissolves sticky stuff. I learned that when I was a seasonal SCA at Pinnacle Mtn. State park after I found a black snake that had gotten stuck in a sticky mouse trap. Gross, but effective. Then I had to re-wash with shampoo to remove the cooking oil. And now I'm a few hairs closer to bald. Luckily you can't tell.

My next mistake was re-hanging the fly strip, thinking that it was still good and that I'd fixed it's wagon by re-adjusting the hook. Not so. Later in the day, the possessed fly strip took flight again, this time to land on the worst thing possible - one of the fuzzy little kittens that was napping on the porch. The kitten, Pearl, automatically turned into a hissing, spitting, growling, flopping ball of fury, wrapping herself even tighter in the sticky strip of goo and now dead flies. Once rescued, I had to coat her in cooking oil, then a bath. Talk about one unhappy kitty.

And once again, I re-hung the fly strip, FURTHER adjusting the hook so there was NO WAY it could fly off again. I must note at this point that the other fly strip still hadn't moved. Fast-forward to this morning, when Marden rescued Opal, the OTHER kitten, from the SAME FLY STRIP. More oil. More bath. More unhappy kitty.

Fly strip in the trash, where it belonged in the first place. Beware the fly strips.