Flies, redux
Warning: If you have a weak tummy, you probably shouldn’t read this post…
I think Mother Nature must not like me very much. I really hate bugs… bugs of all kinds, and yet I keep finding them. In the last week I’ve killed three small cockroaches in the garage (and then I heard an Orkin ad on the radio say “It’s cockroach season, Indiana!” Ya think?), dumped about a teaspoon of fly pupae out of an outdoor trashcan, killed two fuzzy spiders, and tonight was just the absolute kicker.
I decided I needed to fill the birdfeeders – I have one finch feeder and one that I use for a sunflower/safflower mix. I store the birdseed in old Tidy Cat containers, and up until recently that has worked just fine. The finch food is fine – no problems with it – but I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the mix was kind of funky looking, and there were moths in it. I figured the birds would appreciate the live food, and just filled the feeder. Well… tonight, I opened the container and took a look, and it was NASTY. It was like the seeds had just fermented and become disgusting. I stirred around a little bit with the scoop I use, but decided I needed to go buy new birdseed. I loaded Moses into the car and we took a trip to Pet Supplies Plus.
When we got home, I thought I’d dump the old seed in the trash and bleach out the container before putting the new seed in it. When I went to get it, I noticed that there were – worms? – crawling on the scoop, which was laying on top of the container. Hmm. Not worms. Maggots. Which means that the seeds I had stirred up before I left to go buy new? Also full of maggots. In the airtight container.
For the time being I’m storing the new bag of seed in the laundry room, and I’m going tomorrow to find a new storage bin. When I left the finch food was fine, but I may just dump it, too… it’s almost gone, anyway. I just don’t understand… Dad stores his seed in the same type of container on his freaking back porch in HUMID coastal Georgia and has zero problems. Maybe he goes through it faster than I do? Or maybe the flies have just decided to congregate here? It’s going to be the Amityville Horror, or whatever movie featured a whole lotta flies. Save me, please.
In other, non-bug related news… I found a funny thing the other day while browsing the intranet job listings at work. Here are the job requirements as written by HR:
Education/Qualifications
A minimum of an Associate’s degree required.
Candidate must be an expert in Adobe InDesign.
Strong skills in Word, Excel and Powerpoint needed.
Strong attention to detail neccary.
I just thought it, you know, necarry to share that with you. In case you needed a laugh.
Filed under indignities | Comment (1)Cesar Millan can suck it
Not really. I’m kidding.
So, Moses has seemed kind of bored the last couple of days with only ME to play with. I mean, he’s mostly just a fluffy throw rug anyway, but he does like to play. I have plans to try out a dog park in the Avon area this Saturday (I have to pick up a day pass tomorrow), but what to do in the meantime? We walk around the neighborhood on a daily basis, but that’s getting old quickly. I went to the Indy Parks website today to see what parks are close to me – I figured we could walk for a good, long while and he’d get some exercise. You know, a well-exercised dog is a well-behaved dog… I’ve been watching a little too much Dog Whisperer, I think. Anyway, the closest park to me is Southwestway Park. I always thought it was just a softball park, but it does have a playground and picnic shelter, AND hiking trails.
When I read the words “hiking trails”, I had visions of the nice paved paths at Eagle Creek Park. Or at worst, the mulch-covered trails that wind through many Indiana state parks. I packed Moses up – water bowl, bottle of water, treats for the road, and plastic bags (you know, in case he left a deposit on the trail) – and we headed out. We got out of the car, I sprayed myself down with some skeeter keeper-offer stuff, and we hit the trail. It was kind of downhill at first, and a wee bit muddy, but it seemed to be gravelled so I thought we’d be okay. We came to a clearing pretty quickly, only it wasn’t so much a clearing as it was a cleared path for power lines. Whatever… we kept going, came to a fork, and Moses wanted to go left so left we went. Went a little further down an increasingly muddier trail, climbed up a little incline, and took a right. I’m thinking that at some point, we’ll come back out close to where we started, so we forge ahead – up a little more of an incline. It was doable, though I was breathing heavily by the time we got to the top. Kept going… and came to an even steeper and longer incline. Still thinking we’d come out where we started, we headed up the incline. Moses did just fine, but I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. There’s a reason I don’t do interval training on the treadmill… I’m overweight and very, very, very, out of shape. Anyway, we kept going until we ended up in that same clearing with the power lines, only… we were two towers away from the one we started out next to. We started to walk up the next incline, and I decided that was it. We were turning around. I’d rather the devil I knew than not knowing where I was.
We made it back to the car in one piece, not really worse for the wear. Moses was still ready to play when we got home, so the half hour hike didn’t wear him out much, but I’m pretty well done for the day. I tell you, if this is going to be a regular thing, I’m canceling the gym membership.
Lady of the Flies
Oh, God. I walked into the bunny room tonight to find that a first generation set of houseflies had taken up residence in the corner by the window, over Roxy and Rosy (the girlie pigs) cage. I had noticed more flies than usual in the house today but chalked that up to open doors and windows and ill-fitting screens – it was only 83 degrees here today and was a nice, breezy day to have the windows open to air things out. Evidently, the flies are coming from somewhere else and I’m terrified that that somewhere is the bunny room. Wouldn’t you think the highest concentration would be where they hatched?
See, this perturbs me for several reasons. One: while I may not keep my rabbit room sparkling, bleachy clean, I do try and change litter boxes and clean cages frequently enough to avoid something like this happening – for me, that’s one litter box every night, or a litter box change every 5th day. If I notice that someone’s litter box seems heavy or needs to be changed I’ll even go ahead and do it. Two: I HAD a fly infestation like this four years ago which prompted me to rip the carpet/pad out of the rabbit room and paint the concrete floor. The flies had laid their eggs under a plastic storage bin where one of my rabbits had made a puddle without me knowing about it and it hadn’t dried out, so made a nice, warm environment for baby flies to grow. Third: I plain old don’t have time to eradicate flies. There’s no safe way to do it around rabbits except for fly-strips and fly-swatters, and that’s just more time than I can spare.
For now I think I’ve taken care of most of them… there may be one or two hanging out lazily by the ceiling where it’s warm, but I’ll get ‘em eventually. I just hope none of them laid any eggs anywhere. I spent about 90 minutes in the bunny room cleaning the most suspicious-looking litter boxes and a guinea pig cage, and killing as many of the buggers as I could find. These are like mutant flies… it takes more than just a swat to kill them. It seems like they get stunned, fall down, and then I have to step on them, pick them up in a tissue, and flush them to make sure they’re really gone. I’m thinking they may have come from a pile of Moses poo that I picked up and bagged yesterday before mowing the lawn; it was, shall we say, infested when I picked it up, and I foolishly put it in the garage. There were not a lot of flies in the garage, though, and not a lot of traffic in and out today, so I don’t know how they migrated in the house… but that’s my hope. Because otherwise? I have to demolish the bunny room and start all over. And I don’t know if I have the energy for that.
I HATE BUGS.
