As many of you know, we live in a worker's cottage of a dairy farm. The cows graze on several pastures between our house and the share-farmer in the farmhouse at the other end. So, we only have them across the fence a few times during the year. When they are near and it's really hot, we get a few more flies than usual but nothing to write home about.
When I first got here, Hubby snickered at my mission to find fly swatters (as opposed to using fly spray) because that is what I was used to. And I noticed lots of different kinds of fly spray which, in my mind, contradicted the '100% pure' image of the country. But I digress...
My opinion of how to kill flies has drastically changed this last week or so when it was hotter than I have ever felt here. Without screens on the windows, we were inundated with the nasty buggers! And I guess they annoyed everybody else in Taranaki, too, since the fly spray shelves were totally empty in our regular grocery store!
I have sprayed and whacked more flies in the last week than I have the whole time I've been here! And I told myself, it can't stay like this forever--autumn will show up eventually.
During several attempts to clean up the fly corpses from the window sills and all over the carpet and fly crap from EVERYWHERE, it crossed my mind once or twice that flies were an excellent choice for a plague, especially without fly spray. I know the Egyptians survived, but it couldn't have been easy.
9 comments:
Yes, flies are a plaque in and of themselves! We are surrounded by horse farms and have the same problems, but we have screens on our windows and it helps nearly 100 percent. I would be stapling up some screening right away......I am averse to using poisons x Karen
Believe me, I would have screens if I could! Most of the windows here open outward (not like those at your house) and screens are not an option except for the newly offered magnetic screens and we don't have all metal window frames since the house is so old.
Poot you! But it make me laugh. A very amusing post for one who is in mid winter rain! It will be autumn Betty! Groetjes Hetty
It must be super annoying! What I like about staying in the cold place is that we rarely see flies. Hangin' there..
Poor you ! We had a lot of flies last year and I bought a simple thing what my grandma used living on the country side. A simple band with glue on it which attracted the flies and they got stuck. The band hang from the kitchen lamp down. Very efficient and nothing dangerous against the environment, but not very nice to see ! lol !
Cows do seem to attract the flies in large numbers. Can yo get screens for the windows?
A humane way of killing flies is by mixing some ground pepper and sugar together and placing it on a flat stone. This will attract the flies. They will breathe in the pepper, sneeze and knock themselves out on the stone.
God bless.
Interesting to know that they use fly-sprays because such chemicals are always bad. Why the windows don't have screen - is it a NZ culture? You are hot and we are cold (freezing). :-)
This answers the question I asked in a comment to your next post.
Even with the flies, it still sounds like an idyllic place to live.
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