It’s early summer and house flies are becoming abundant. We haven’t had much of a problem with them over the last few years, as we used our A/C pretty freely. Keeping everything closed keeps them out of the house.
But we lost that option about two weeks ago when the central A/C died. I’m pretty certain that it has lost too much refrigerant. And our system is an older R12 system. So it can’t be recharged. We had it recharged once about 10 years ago, and were warned at that time that R12 systems are going to have to be replaced.
Well, replacing the AC isn’t in the budget at the moment. (Roof is taking priority.) So we’ve been keeping windows open and fans on. Unfortunately, this has led to a sizeable indoor population of flies. Not sure exactly how they’re getting in, as all the windows have screens. But they are getting in.
So today while doing some vacuuming, I managed to catch a couple of flies while my son was watching. Now it is a game. Whenever flies start gathering in a spot, my son calls me to vacuum them up. I’ll admit that it’s sort of fun hunting flies with the extension wand on the vacuum. I’m learning that you have to move up on them very slowly. Once you get close enough, the incoming rush of air is too strong and as soon as the fly tries to take off, it gets sucked in. There is also something slightly satisfying as I can usually feel the fly bounce around inside the vacuum hose as it is sucked away to its final resting place. But more importantly, my son finds the whole process hilarious. He tried keeping count for a while (got over 100, BTW), but now we just laugh a lot as each fly is caught.
On the good news front, while I’ve had it out, I’ve cleaned up a lot of dust and cobwebs from around the house, in places that rarely get attention. Gotta do something while waiting for flies to land so you can catch them. May as well put that vacuum and extension wand to it’s intended use. A couple more days of this, and I might run out of cobwebs in various corners all over the house.
–Peter <== not the world’s best housekeeper, but far from the worst