Fly Fly Away

When I inevitably ask people about their weekends tomorrow, I really hope they ask me about mine. “And what did you do this weekend?” they’ll say. “Oh, nothing really… I cleaned and read and made CDs and watched Six Feet Under and the Olympics,” I’ll tell them, before dropping the announcement of what really consumed my weekend. “Oh and I committed fruit fly genocide.” “What?” they’ll ask, confused. And then I’ll have to explain just why I spent hours on end over the past few days eradicating these tiny, flighty bugs with all manner of tools and the dedication of a serial killer.

That’s what it takes to remove an entire species from the biosphere that is my apartment. I don’t know where they came from (perhaps outside, where insects tend to live?) but I know why they came. A week or so ago I stupidly left an unwashed-out bottle of grapefruit juice on my counter. Days later I was dealing with an influx of these miniscule flies roaming about my kitchen. I spent some time killing them, but obviously I didn’t take them all out, and being as they are, they mated and multiplied exponentially. The covered the corners of my walls, fluttered about the air in no discernible patterns, and generally flummoxed me.

I put on the song “Fruit Fly” by Nada Surf (amazing, isn’t it, how there’s a song for every moment?) and set out to remove them from my life. “There’s No Home For You Here” by the White Stripes rang through my head as I used my makeshift flyswatter (a yellow dish towel) and literally flogged them to death. The ones with the audacity to fly directly into my face met their fates in the palm of my quick hands; though, crafty little devils they are, I often captured them and clenched my fist only to watch them fly out unharmed moments later.

I thought by midweek I had successfully won the battle against these pests of the smallest order, but somehow, Darwin had chosen them to continue to take roost in my kitchen. Though I had discovered (finally) that the grapefruit juice was the drawing card, and had removed all foodstuffs and juices from my kitchen, the little buggers remained. Pearl Jam’s “Bugs” now my soundtrack, it had become clear to me that even Hitler would have problems erasing the existence of fruit flies from my apartment (and yes, I know that sounds insensitive, but that’s why it’s funny). So this weekend, I decided I’d had enough. No more mister nice guy.

I’m pretty sure I’ve taken out upwards of 40 of them in the past two days. I used my trusty dish towel. My bare hands. A couple kills came from a magazine insert I had fashioned into a swatter, though these homicides came at the expense of my kitchen wall, where ink had rubbed off the print and onto the paint, somehow now immovable and un-washable. With each successive murder, I felt closer to the goal of complete annihilation of this species of most unwelcome house guest. And yet they keep coming. Every time I think I’m down to the last of the Mohicans, I discover more fruit flies scurrying on the surfaces of my various kitchen appliances, walls and cupboards. Do they mate when I’m not looking? Do they sense the end of their world and are left to do nothing but have sex? Do fruit flies even mate in the traditional sense? Or do they just duplicate themselves like cells? It sure seems that way.

With each smack of my towel against a hard kitchen surface, I wondered what the neighbors must be thinking. “What is this racket, and at such odd hours?” Worst of all, it doesn’t happen at regular intervals. “Once I’ve started to get used to all that banging, then comes a long period of quiet before it all starts up again!” they would say. Or maybe they don’t even notice. I sometimes wonder if anyone can hear any sounds emitting from my corner apartment. If only they knew I was in here committing mass murder. That might raise some heads.

It’s late afternoon now, and I’ve taken a break from the slaughter. I’d like to believe there are only two or three left buzzing around, but that’s too many. As long as there are two, there’s a chance for twenty. I think they know that. Every time I smack one to its flattened death with my towel, I flick it into the sink, where I will wash it down the drain later. The ceramic basin of my dirty old sink quickly becomes a war-like graveyard, with bodies strewn about waiting for their proper burial. For some reason the rest of the living flies still like to gather around this very location, perhaps to mourn their dead. I am left to wonder about the thoughts of the fruit fly. When they see this giant arm wielding a yellow towel of doom, do they know their time is nigh? Do they make haste with the living (and the reproducing) in the meanwhile?

I seem to recall from some elementary school science class that the life of a fruit fly is something near 24 hours. If that’s the case, what keeps them going? There’s certainly no food left for them here, I’ve made certain of that. I cleaned my sink, washed my dishes, scrubbed my oven top, and removed all signs of sugary, fruity food for them to feast on. For all my efforts to snuff them out, I am left with nothing more than an endless frustration that their existence is something I have no control over. Just about the only good thing that has come out of all this is that it’s help me take my mind off, for a while at least, what really hangs over my head… the end of summer. I’m looking forward to life without these fruit flies, even if right now I can’t quite imagine what that might be like. Life in the months ahead, as summer turns to fall and then winter? Not ready for that, though I have a good idea of how that might be. It resembles life with these stupid bugs in my kitchen—miserable.