Thursday 11 August 2016

Fly traps

Yesterday the sun was hot and I left the doors open, much as I did when we had a cat and a dog.
After a few moments I was getting dive bombed by great big blue bottles and I remembered why I'd been keeping the doors firmly closed!
I went for the fly spray.
After dealing with them my mind took me back to the warm season in Rochdale....I can't remember if it was ever hot but I do remember what we did about flies in the days before sprays!
A long brown sticky wand was hung up. Any unwary flying creatures who landed on it got stuck and couldn't get off.
Their angry buzzing and their determined efforts to free themselves was a part of the summer scene!
The brown paper stayed in place the whole of the summer. The bodies of their compatriots didn't seem to put off late summer fliers...
It became utterly horrible to live with. Only one thing would have been worse, the flies landing on our food or buzzing around our heads at some very inconvenient moments.
My mother, clearly enthused by sticky trapping used much the same method on mice...I have no memory of how the trap was put together...it seems unlikely that they were sold as that but I do remember the dreadful cries of stuck mice . She dealt with them by having a bucket of water ready...they were drowned which she claimed was a demonstration of kindness. But we only had sticky mice traps once, the others for flying insects were there every year!
I can't remember what we called these things but they appeared everywhere, in all the local shops, in the library, in the church, brown fly infested mobiles hung until we were certain that we'd reached the end of the summer.
Taking down this gruesome collection of dead bodies brought me great joy...and thankfully now there's no need for them anyway...
Pass me the spray please!


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2 comments:

UKViewer said...

I believe that you can still buy fly papers in older hardware stores. In our young days, a rolled up newspaper was the weapon of choice. Nowadays, the fly screens that you can hang over doorways work, but by the time the cats have used their claws on them, they are virtually useless. Hand me the fly spray please.

jante said...

Rather than the old fashioned fly papers you talk about I now use sunflowers that stick to the window and are very effective. :)