Adventures with Flies - Straight, Fruit and Dragon

It was asking for trouble really. 

The minute I posted my Love Bug piece about my delights in enjoying observing and anthropomorphising the wee bugs in the garden, we had an explosion of fruit flies. You know, those itty-bitty little flies that seem to magically appear and hover over the over-ripe fruit in the kitchen? Well, they not only hovered, they multiplied. 

They lined the kitchen cupboards in enough numbers to create a moving, speckled look. They got inside unopened loaves of bread and danced. They moved in indignant clouds if you wanted to find a piece of fruit. 

But when they moved into the lounge room and onto the bookcase and my books, and then into the bedrooms within hours of each other, they went too far. I resorted to the internet suggestion of an apple cider vinegar trap. 

It worked. I'm not proud of having to do it, but it worked. The numbers have reduced dramatically. 

I'm not sure what exactly helped them explode in numbers though. The right time of year? The temperature? Too many ripe bananas not being turned into banana bread quickly enough? All of the above?

This was a defeat. My preferred leave-them-be approach to bugs got left drowning in the apple cider vinegar along with the corpses of the many, many fruit flies.

Then, we had the Freaky Friday of Flies (16 May 2021). 

Background: We often have flies which dart into the kitchen whenever the back door opens. Not the fruity ones, just the regular, annoying ones which buzz around you and try and land on your food and contaminate it. The flies then rush to sit on the kitchen windows trying to figure out how to get out again. 

At first, I was smacking and killing and dumping them outside. But I quickly realised some of the fly bodies I dumped on the deck disappeared. Which meant - aha! - they weren't dead and I was just stunning them. This was much more in line with my try-not-to-kill-bugs preference. From there, my hit-and-miss attempts at stunning them quickly morphed into a trap-and-release technique of popping a plastic cup over the flies (easiest done while on the window and they're distracted by the Big Light Beyond), scooping a bit of paper underneath and carrying and releasing the fly outside.

Our essential trap-and-release gear. Note the folded circular has the best amount of firmness and flex.

This is now our normal technique for getting rid of the flies. Even Hubs came around to this one - especially after he was successful the first time he tried it. We usually have one or two sneaking in at any given time in summer. A bad day will see six of the little so-and-sos dotting the window at once. But it's rare that we have to resort to the bop-and-stun or bop-and-kill now.

And this brings us back to the Freaky Friday. There were three flies on the kitchen when I woke up. An unusual number to be in the house overnight, but ok. One by one, I popped them all outside. Over the course of the day, every time I went into the kitchen, there were at least two back on the window. 

"Where are they coming from?" I yelled to the heavens. The heavens shrugged. 

After 20 trap-and-releases, I lost count. 

I think there were more than 30 that day. This is an insane number. Remember, six flies in the kitchen on a stinky hot summer's day (when flies are super-active) feels excessive. 20+ was insane. I began to feverishly wonder if there was a nest of them somewhere in the house and they were crawling out one by one. They weren't hovering by the back door, where you can see them trying to dart in. 

In the end, I was wondering if it was the same crazy fly trying to get back in. So instead of trapping and releasing 30, I wondered it I'd trapped and released the same one 30 times?! At this point, anything was possible. So, instead of trapping the last couple of flies that day (let's call them numbers 29 and 30), I bopped them. Hopefully to stun rather than kill. If it was the same fly, hopefully it didn't like getting stunned and it wouldn't come back.

The weekend wasn't as bad as that Friday, but there were still quite a few. I still don't know what caused or triggered that magnificent piece of Friday Fly Freakery. Maybe I'd have an answer if I was a fly-on-the-wall? *smirks and darts away to avoid a swat*

And then we then wrapped up the Adventures with Flies with Sunday 18 April 2021.

We went for an early dog walk at around 2.30pm. Part of the reason for going earlier was that LittleOne had had a spectacularly short sleep the previous night (4! hours 🤦‍♀️) and a catch-up nap which had ended too soon. So I was really hoping a walk on a pleasant cool Sunday afternoon might prove... lulling. The second reason was to give my Indi-woofer-girl a longer walk. With the days growing shorter, by the time I finish work, get home and wrangle everyone outside, there's usually only time for a brisk, rushed walk. So, off we went. 

LittleOne decided we were to go a different way. On the previous day's walk, I'd noticed a new puppy barking at us from a very unkempt house and garden (the kind of unkempt where you're not sure if the house is being lived/squatted in or not). So, with LittleOne's change from our usual direction, I made for this house. You know, just to make sure the pup was ok, that there was someone living there and it hadn't been dumped etc etc. (There was a reasonably newish-looking car outside, and no pup to be seen, so I will assume all is good for now.)

 En route, LittleOne pointed out a dragonfly unmoving in mid-air between two trees. We quickly realised it was trapped in a giant spiderweb, invisible in the afternoon light. There was no spider in sight and the dragonfly gave a single desperate flap and stayed stuck where it was. It was alive.

Yes, of course I tried to get it down. 

The web was the absolutely stickiest web I'd ever come across. I was using a flimsy dried branch for my rescue and it snapped when the sticky web resisted. I eventually got the dragonfly down, but its two left wings were sort of stuck together with the web. Like chewing gum. I popped the dragonfly on a bush and left it there, with the awful feeling of having made its fate worse.

I didn't know what else I could do.

On the way back, it was still on the bush, clutching tight to a leaf. LittleOne asked if "my dragonfly" was still there. I gritted my teeth, lied and said I couldn't see it. 

We got home and I released Indi-woof-girl off her leash to get a long drink and quickly did a google of dragonflies and webs. I saw the following results:

I skimmed these snippets and didn't even click on them. It was all I needed to know. That others had tried to rescue dragonflies from spiderwebs. I gave Indi stern instructions to stay on the back deck and not follow us, grabbed a plastic tub and LittleOne to go on a dragonfly rescue mission. 

LittleOne walked brave and fast with me, calling us "superheroes". I wished I had the same faith. 

Back home, with dragonfly on our back deck table, to the occasional "come on, little guy" encouragement from LittleOne, I coaxed the dragonfly to hold onto my finger (per the blog extract Google had shown me) and tried to pull at the web with a wet finger. The stickiness was on a par with superglue or gum. Every time my fingers dried, the web stuck my finger fast to the dragonfly's wing! If I pulled too hard, I pulled the dragonfly off my other finger by its wing.

Eventually, after trying a pen knife and then a twig to cut through and wind around the sticky strands, I got enough of the sticky web off that I was able to separate the wings. Phew! Step one.

Then, I managed to remove all visible sticky strands from the wings. One of the wings was slightly crumpled. The dragonfly sat on the table, unmoving, overly slumped to its left, traumatised wings.

Not knowing what else to do, we left it and went inside. 

I popped out a couple of times to check on it in the next 5-10 minutes. It wasn't moving. Maybe I thought, I could wet a finger and tried to run it along the wing in case there was more web. I tried it. The dragonfly fluttered its wings, as though it was an unpleasant feeling. Which I'm sure it was.

I didn't know how much damage I was doing to the dragonfly by blundering around trying to help. I didn't know how much energy it had expended trying to escape the web in the first place. I didn't know. 

I checked google for what they ate. Mozzies, amongst other things. Easy. I went to our magic Poinciana tree and within 2 minutes had killed a mozzie. I stuck it under the dragonfly's nose with a drop of water. It didn't react. I told myself I couldn't do any more. I went inside.

I went outside again. I couldn't see the dragonfly on the table. My heart leapt. Then I saw it struggling to hold on at the edge of the table. My heart dropped. I went and broke a little branch with some green leaves on it and ushered away from the edge, hoping the natural greenery might help the dragonfly feel more comfortable. The dragonfly buzzed its wings and didn't look interested.

I went inside. The afternoon was drifting to cool as the shadows started to pull. 

I came back out. The dragonfly was still on the table, its neck pushed down at a strange angle, as though it couldn't support its head comfortably. I watched it sadly. It sat there, unmoving.

Then it fluttered to the edge of the table again. Head still drooping oddly, still leaning heavily to its left side.

But this time, it seemed to have a... purpose its actions, rather than just trying to gather its strength. I left it at the table edge and it dropped one inch so that it was hanging on the side of the tablecloth (perpendicular to the ground). Then it dropped another inch. It perched there. Looking more... - could it be - more comfortable? It buzzed its wings. Did a little jump two inches to the left.

It buzzed its wings again, fluttered and flew!

Unsteadily for the first metre, then swooped. Gloriously, confidently towards a tall hedge.

Free!

Yes, I cried.

I ran inside to let everyone know our dragonfly had flown away. We did it!

(Yes, it might well have not made it through the night. But it didn't die at my hands, and I tried to help and I'll tell myself that my bumbling efforts helped it fly away. Fly well, little dragonfly💕)

I didn't get another photo. Maybe I should have. But I didn't. It had a beautiful mauve body - not sure if it shows in the first photo, but it does. That was also the first time I voluntarily ushered a bug to hold onto my finger. It wasn't as scratchy strange as I thought it would feel. The things you learn!

And there you have it - the latest chapters in ReeBee's Adventures with Flies - the regular kind, the fruit kind and the best of all dragon kind 😁

Du fond du coeur.