When I got home this evening, there were two rather large, kind of green flies living in my apartment. I expect they got in through the little openings around my window air conditioner. It is my intent to get packaging tape or something and totally seal those cracks up, but so far I have forgotten to buy packaging tape at every single available opportunity.
Now, as you may remember, I am insane. I am just absolutely crazy. My crazy runs deep and reaches into many aspects of my life, so I'm never really free of my own insanity. One particular aspect on my crazy that impacted my evening was that I don't like to kill things. I dread running over an animal in the road, from now on refuse to put out mouse traps, and I don't even like killing insects that have found their way into my home. It isn't that I can't deal with the dead animal. No, I can dispose of a mouse that has passed on to the big cheese in the sky, flush a fish that is now swimming in the pond around God's feet, or vacuum up the tiny, crunchy carcasses of Asian lady beetles that seem to have committed mass suicide in my window sill.
My problem lies only with the actual killing of the animal or living thing. This is why, when there are bugs, I either tend to ignore them and let them live out their life, shoo them away from me, or stalk them in my home, armed with a facial tissue with the intent of throwing them out the door to live the remainder of their lives in nature. I especially feel that spiders should be saved and released to the wild, but this general non-killing procedure extends to all other insects and the occasional mouse as well.
So as soon as I got home and heard and saw these two enormous green flies buzzing around the apartment, I put down my purse and armed myself with a Target brand facial tissue. The first fly was pretty easy to catch. It kept throwing itself against the window in the living room, so I just stood there for a few seconds, then covered it in the tissue, scooped it up, wrapped it up, opened the window, and shook it out. The fly happily buzzed away, probably thanking me for its new found freedom.
The second fly was much more athletic than the first fly. Instead of picking one spot on one window to repeatedly bounce off of, this second fly - from now on to be referred to as
Malicious Taunting Fly - chose what is probably considered a better survival technique where it moved around a lot. After maybe ten minutes (my particular brand of crazy has made me quite patient), I stood still and listened. Deciding that
Malicious Taunting Fly had grown tired and would be quiet for the rest of the evening, I shrugged and went about my business. In my head, I told myself that
Malicious Taunting Fly would probably slip right back out the way he came in.
But it was not to be so. Little did I know this was just the beginning of a long, epic battle between crazy woman and non-threatening insect much, much smaller than her.
After a while of going about my business, I continued my evening festivities by putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth. Because I live alone and because, despite the window air conditioner, it is approximately 300 degrees Fahrenheit in my apartment at any given time, I will admit that I don't sleep in much. So there I am, lounging in my pajamas on the couch, reading a Percy Jackson book without my glasses (just holding the book rather close to my face), when I hear it.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! buzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Malicious Taunting Fly is flying laps from the wall where my head it to the lamp and back again. I squinted one eye and watched it for a couple of laps, then stood up to retrieve my bug-catching tissue. As soon as I stood up,
Malicious Taunting Fly disappeared. Just to be sure, I held very still for a long, long time (probably like 15 seconds or something ridiculous like that), then threw myself back onto the couch.
No sooner had I again become engrossed in the hijinks of half-blood Percy Jackson and his friends Annabeth, Grover the satyr, and Tyson the cyclops, than
Malicious Taunting Fly begins flying frantic laps again. It was like
Malicious Taunting Fly thought he was in the Indy 500 or something. It was crazy and noisy, and I would stand for it no longer.
Even though when I stood up again,
Malicious Taunting Fly stopped, I waited. My patience paid off when he started flying laps again. I began trying to capture
Malicious Taunting Fly without killing him.
Let me just say that it is more difficult that you would think to catch a crazy, psycho fly that won't land without killing it using only a tissue.
Malicious Taunting Fly had me running all over the living room, climbing on furniture, and trying to set little traps. I discovered he liked the lamp, so I sat in wait, hand poised, to catch him should he land on the lamp. I climbed onto the armchair to try to reach him when he crawled on the crown molding. I opened the blinds so he couldn't hide behind them, allowing anyone walking in front of my apartment to view the Crazy Fly Catching Show.
Still none of this worked.
Malicious Taunting Fly continued to fly at practically light speed in circles around the living room. That's when I got the brilliant idea that if I could just
stun Malicious Taunting Fly then I could scoop up the little guy in his second of immobility and throw him outside. I began swatting at him, trying to hit him hard enough to knock him to the ground but not hard enough to kill him.
Unfortunately for me, however,
Malicious Taunting Fly is some sort of mutant un-stunnable fly. When my causing-head-trauma plan didn't work, I took a deep breath and told myself I could move on. I decided I could be the bigger person and let the fly live out the rest of its life annoyingly buzzing in frantic circles relentlessly around my living room as if it were always hopped up on cocaine. How long do flies live, anyway? It is my understanding they don't live very long.
Half content with my decision, I laid back down on the couch and turned off the light. I decided to watch an episode of
The Office on my computer before going to bed. As I started to relax,
Malicious Taunting Fly flew at my computer screen and just started walking around. I stood up to retrieve my discarded tissue, and
Malicious Taunting Fly just started flying at my face. When I put my hands up to protect my face,
Malicious Taunting Fly began pummeling my torso. He flew at me again and again, bouncing off of me, all the while buzzing louder than I think flies are supposed to be able to buzz.
That's when I knew
Malicious Taunting Fly was intentionally, and with malice, going out of his way to mess with me.
Malicious Taunting Fly started taking a promenade on my screen again, so I reached for a tissue. I briefly considered killing him, but I didn't want fly guts all over my computer screen, and also, I spent so much time already trying to get him out alive, killing him now would make all that other time seem like just a bunch of time wasted by a mentally unstable crazy person. After a moment of hesitation, I slowly tried to gently scoop him off the computer screen and wrap him up.
And that stupid
Malicious Taunting Fly flew off.
When he came back, however, I was ready for him. I scooped him up in the tissue without a millisecond of hesitation and wrapped another tissue around for good measure. As I walked as quickly as I could for the door, I could feel
Malicious Taunting Fly buzzing and flipping out inside his tissue cocoon. He was angry, and I knew that if he managed to escape, he would kill me with his little fly ways.
Panicking ever so slightly, I flung open the balcony doors and threw
Malicious Taunting Fly - tissue cocoon and all - outside and slammed the door. I peered through the window for about a minute, expecting to see
Malicious Taunting Fly emerge from his pillow-soft prison and disappear into the nighttime, but it didn't happen.
For all I know,
Malicious Taunting Fly is still inside the house, laying in wait and plotting to kill me in my sleep.
