Summertime cometh and with it comes a flurry of unwanted guests which are food for some and major household pests to others.
I speak about the adorable creature “The House Fly”or sa Ghaeilge An cuil tí. I remember in my younger days being sent into Benner’s shop in Tralee to buy the fly paper. This was a roll of sticky yellow paper which you pulled out and attached to doors and ceilings to catch flies as they appeared and after a while it was full of dead flies which were attracted to the honey based gluey paper. The sight of all these dead flies was not a particularly appetising spectacle around a kitchen table, but it served its purpose of keeping the fly population under control. Nowadays, you can still purchase the fly paper and the fly swaths, but people also use more sophisticated methods, like battery charged racquets which administer a shock, inviting jar traps that flies enter but cannot escape from, while some people swath them away with their hands or a rolled-up newspaper, magazine or towel. Flies beware.
The house fly feeds on sweet substances like honey, sugar and juices, while spiders, birds and ants feed on flies. The female fly itself is not the most hygienic of insects laying her maggot eggs on droppings [mostly dogs] and pigs.
You know the words of the song or nursery rhyme that we all learned in school. “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, but I don't know why she swallowed the fly I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a spider. It wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed a spider to catch the fly. But I don't know why she swallowed the fly etc
Moving upscale on the summer pest ladder we encounter the Blue Bottle which instils fear into some people lest they land on some exposed food. They make an irritating loud buzzing sound and feed on organic substances such as compost, meat and household foods. The ‘lovely’ creatures stay around all year while overwintering as adults. They lay larvae eggs on rotten meat, wounds, cuts on live animals and sometimes even on fish. They will not be appearing on any of my household menus any time soon and remain on my ‘to be avoided’ summer acquaintance list.
Finally on this week’s summer specials list comes the drone fly or hover fly which is quite an attractive member of the fly family. The adult hover feeds on nectar but the rat-tailed maggot feeds on aphids and soft bodied insects. They fly all year round but prefer sunny weather. The rat-tailed maggot has no real tail, but its fake tail is actually a very interesting 20mm long breathing tube which allows it to breathe when submerged. It lives in stagnant oxygen deprived water. The adult hoverfly winters in hollow trees.
So, there you have details of a few of my list of unwanted summer flying visitors.
Make sure you keep any food covered and avoid any unnecessary exposure to unwanted infection. Let’s be careful about our flies and where they land, we don’t really want any flies in our ointments. Bígí cúramach.
Slán tamall
Script by Mick O Callaghan
Research by Kealan Swinburne
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