Oh, by the way, no kayak purchase yet, but we will do a second round of test drives sometime next week and hopefully come up with a winner.
posted by Rob Rohr at 4:05 PM 
The Laird of the Flies
I have heard mutterings from the masses that I haven't updated my site in over a week. After checking on the facts it is apparent that my site is almost a week and a half old. In an effort to appease the masses, I'm posting an update.
Friday, July 5, 2002
Last Friday, I left work early in order to meet up with Margot and head out to test drive a few kayaks with the hope of buying a new one for Margot. When I arrived home, I noticed an ungodly number of flies wandering about the kitchen window. I briefly considered rolling up a newspaper and going on a smushing campaign, but on further reflection, considering the success (or lack thereof) of previous home improvement escapades undertaken without the wise council of my sweetie, decided to await her imminent arrival.
She arrived home, was promptly and thoroughly disgusted by the seething mass of flies, and after a discussion, we decided that we would deal with the problem in a nontoxic, but effective way after we returned from the kayak adventure. We also hoped the cats would eat some of the flies while we were out of the house. We starve the cats specifically for this purpose, or so they would have us believe. On our way home from the test drive, we stopped at our local MallWart, bought some flypaper, as well as some clear plastic strips to stick to the bottom of the window pane.
We hung the paper, applied the window treatments, then sat back to dinner, where I had a stunningly good idea. We had a concentrated population of relatively docile house flies, and I had a pretty new, high power vacuum cleaner that had yet to prove to be a fiscally prudent investment. 2 + 2 would seem to be 4, and I was up and hunting those tiny bundles of instinct as soon as dinner was done.
I had a relatively good run, snagging about 60 flies, before I ran out of targets, and called it quits for the evening. There were still quite a few flies in between the various screen and storm windows within the casing of the kitchen window, but they would have to wait until the following day when we could focus all of our wits and cunning to combat this airborne menace.
Friday Kills: ~60Flypaper Victims: 2Saturday, July 6, 2002
Saturday morning was a good morning. Margot got up before me, and it wasn't long before I heard her downstairs with the vacuum cleaner, scooping up those flies that had found good hiding places and escaped my notice the evening before. By the time I'd made my way downstairs, she had scooped up 20 of the little buggers.
During the course of the day, in between various games of cribbage and a board game where we each tried to take control of Venice with flocks of pigeons, we would wander about the apartment and vacuum up any fly that was foolish enough to buzz about the open areas. By the end of the day, Margot and her Vorpal Vacuum Flybane had sucked up another 60 or so flies, and I added another 12 or so to the total.
Saturday Kills: ~72Flypaper Victims: 8Sunday, July 7, 2002
Sunday morning, we were up early to work a country music festival sponsored by the station. Margot snagged a few more flies that morning as we got ready to head out. Also noticeable was the huge increase in flies caught by the fly strips attached to the bottom of the windows. 98% of the flies caught by non-suction means were done by the window based fly management products rather than the hanging strip-based technology.
After a long day's work, we returned to find very few free roaming flies, and so, after sucking up the visible holdouts and snagging all remaining flies inside the various components of the kitchen window casing, we were left with one known fly buzzing about our condominium.
Saturday Kills: ~15Flypaper Victims: 22Monday, July 8, 2002
Monday morning showed only one additional fly stuck to the flypaper, and one little baby fly buzzing about the upstairs (in all this time, only two flies had the temerity to venture upstairs). It was now time to transform the carnage into cold statistics.
Flies Vacuumed: ~150Flies Smushed: 0Flies Stuck to various flypaper traps: 24Flies Released to Warn Others About the Folly of Swarming Margot & Rob's Place:12Cat's Confused by Incessant Vacuuming: 2Flies Eaten by Cats: 0Flies Harassed by Cats: 0Flies Slightly Inconvenienced by Cats: 0Cats Fired From Security Detail: 2Cats Bothered by Newfound Unemployment: 0All in all the campaign can be rated a success, though it still isn't clear where the source of all these flies was. Now if only we can do something about the slugs. And no, I'm not referring to the cats.
posted by Rob Rohr at 1:37 PM