The Summer That Never Left and Uninvited Flies

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Recently I went out for the entire day and when I came home I had a swarm of flies sitting by the velux, two days in a row. The buzzing was loud. It’s a good thing that I am not squeamish about flies because this was the stuff of nightmares.

This summer I’ve had puce de canards burrow into my legs and die causing discomfort for a few days, I’ve gone for Monday runs where midges were an issue, and recently I saw clouds of flying ants, but luckily these insects didn’t pester me.

The cluster fly experience is one I wouldn’t recommend. If you can avoid it, do. According to Gemini the flies come out all of a sudden, I suspect due to the weird weather we’ve had this summer. Usually we have cycles of heat, and cold, and comfortable weather. This year we’ve had five or six heat waves and very little rain.

The result is that plenty of flies, ants, and other insects haven’t had their usual cycles. Even bees suffered with the heat, and lack of flowers and rain.

When I saw the swarm by the window I thought “Did I leave something in the bin for them to feast on?”. I hit the bin. nothing flew out. That’s good, it shows that it wasn’t a mistake I made. I believe that by having the air vents for the veluxes open all summer flies were able to lay eggs, and when the temperature shifted it triggered a mass hatching.

In theory the mass hatching came from the roof, and they came into my apartment. I noticed hundreds of dots by the velux so I cleaned them away, as well as by another window. My hope is that the dots were the eggs that I destroyed, and prevented from hatching.

There is a silver lining. Because I kept the shutters closed downstairs all these flies clustered at the window, desperate to fly out through the velux. When I open the velux they fly out. This worked several times. I then had to hunt and kill the flies that had the wrong instinct. Flies that decided to stay indoors.

Convention says that we should use fly swatters but I found that t-shirts, towels and other cloth work extremely well, especially when you’re dealing with plenty of flies in a space of days. The towel knocks them out, and then you hoover them up. If they wake up they’re trapped.

My trap is a neoprene glove to prevent them from getting back out of the hoovers.

The problem I am facing now is that I have to keep the windows to prevent a new infestation from taking place. The challenge I’m facing is that we’re in a summer without end. They forecast lower temperatures, and they forecast rain. They’re forecast into the wishful future, rather than the real future.

The consequence is that I need to keep my windows closed, just when the mornings are cool but the afternoons are warm. 28°c today, and up to 31°c on Monday. This is a summer that will never end.

For the first time I want summer to end, so that the minergie building cools, and so that the flies that are preventing me from opening windows die.

This blog post is as a historical document commenting on the weird weather from this summer. And Finally, I suspect the fly problem is resolved. I hope it is. I’d like to aerate tomorrow or the next day, more selectively.