Tenacious Aussie Flies
zzzzzzZZZZZZzzzz... *silence*... zzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzz....
That's the only sound that will keep me awake at night... either that or some crazy guy banging on my bedroom door trying to come in and kill me. That'd probably keep me up at night as well.
But the faintest, high-pitched buzz sound that comes from blood-sucking mosquitoes while I lay in complete darkness is a heart dropper for me.
Maybe it's the thought of getting malaria. Or maybe I'm just uncomfortable thinking about some bug digging into my skin and stealing my precious blood.
But I think more than anything, I just hate having a bug being all up in my personal space.
The flies in Kentucky seem to understand American's personal space complex. If a fly gets up in your face, you just wave your hand around and they're like, "Oh, yeah. Right - I get it. You want me to leave," and they go find some poop to lick.
But in Australia, the flies are tenacious little jerks.
A wave of the hand to an Australian fly is like a friendly "Howdy!" and they get all up in your face trying to get friendly.
"Dude! Get up off me!" you say, but the smell on your breath of whatever you had to eat for lunch is like saying, "Come in my mouth and taste around with your puke face."
So they try.
I got caught in the bathroom with this massive fly that was not only all up in my face, but really super-loud. Annoyed, I swatted at it with my shirt. It giggled like a little school girl and thought I was flirting with it.
I stared getting angry and swatted at it like it was poisonous.
Finally - SMACK! I addled it (that one's for you Memaw).
It fell to the ground, alive but totally confused. "I thought you were flirting!" That was my opportunity to overcome my opponent. With a tissue in hand, and crushed the fly with the unforgiving force of my karate pinch grip.
There was a satisfying crunch.
I couldn't help but take a quick peak at the carnage before I sent the mangled fly down the toilet.
As I unfolded the tissue, I saw heaps of maggots squirming around. I killed a mommy fly.
And it's times like these that I think of the famous Kermit the Frog quote, "Time's fun when your having flies."
Comments
Some reckon our accent came about because of flies. We sort of purse our lips and don't enunciate vowels properly apparently so flies don't get in our mouth. When you're out in the bush watch people speak and see if they don't open their mouths wide when they speak.
Don't worry about the mozzies. No malaria in Oz. Up north they do carry Ross River Fever though which can be nasty - flu like symptoms, rash and fever. Not everyone who gets infected shows symptoms and it is not fatal. The best mozzie repellent is RID and you can get it from almost any pharmacy or supermarket. I was in the Amazonian jungle once and few researchers there were thrilled to hear that we Aussies had turned up with Rid. Rid contains DEET which can irritate sensitive skin though - it fair dinkum burns if you use too much for us sensitive types. Another legendary Aussie mozzie and fly repellent is Aerogard. Probably Australia's favourite. It also contains DEET I think.
Crikey, I do go on a bit when I get on roll don't I. Sorry about that.
Hope you're enjoying my fair city of Sydney where the mozzies are as big as birds. So are the blowies (blowflies). Watch out for the bluebottle flies out in the bush too. They sting like buggery too. I won't mention the Sydney funnel web spider or red back spiders or that 18 out of 20 of the world's deadliest snakes are Aussie or box jellyfish or... Just have fun. ;-)
"... go find some poop to lick..." had me in hysterics, seriously. I was damn near tears.