Flies, Maggots, and Suburban New Jersey

It's amazing that I had to enter my late forties to learn this marvelous trick. Did you ever want to get rid of a common house fly, but you did not have a fly swatter handy? I just learned from one of my coworkers a fantastic method for killing those annoying pests.

If you try swatting the fly with your hand or any other solid object you will probably miss. The fly feels the wind created by you hand and takes off for greener pastures, only to come back to a few seconds later to continue bothering you. What you need to do is clap your hands about three inches above the fly. The fly feels the wind coming from both directions, so he flies straight up just in time to be zapped by your hands. The winged, compound eyed nuisance gets stunned and falls to the ground. Then you can finish him off and throw him away. Try it, it really works!

Since we are on the subject of flies I'll mention some of my childhood memories in suburban New Jersey. When I was young in the 1960s/1970s we used to throw our garbage out into a few galvanized steel garbage cans that were in our backyard. The garbage truck used to come to collect the garbage once a week. It was my job the night before the collection to carry the garbage cans from the backyard to the strip of grass that was between the sidewalk and the street. The sanitation workers, who we used to call "garbage men", would empty out the contents of the garbage cans into the garbage truck. Sometimes the garbage was stuck inside the cans, and they would bang the cans on the truck until the garbage came out. This of course would bend the cans out of shape in a way that made it impossible to seal the cans with their lids.

This of course was a blessing for the flies. Since the garbage cans could not be covered properly, my favorite insects had and excellent opportunity to enjoy our leftovers. These leftovers were often became a fly nursery, especially if I forgot to bring the garbage cans to the front of the house the night before the collection. This gave the garbage had an extra week to "ferment". I was often greeted by little cute white maggots after opening such a garbage can.

I don't remember when almost everyone replaced the metal garbage cans with green, plastic ones. They were lighter, and they did not bend out of shape. They would eventually crack. I think that they also started collecting the garbage twice a week. After that the maggots would appear less frequently.

Aren't you glad that I shared this with you?