Birds of the Air, Beasts of the Field, Bugs of the Backyard

So one thing that I did not expect was the degree of bugginess here in Texas. Of course, it varies according to the time and the season. Right now, it’s a hot, muggy summer and the little bastards are uniquely active. We have spiders everywhere in the yard (I’ve destroyed two Brown Recluse nests already) and insects of all descriptions -- paper wasps, mud dauber wasps, mosquitos (my feet and legs are apparently considered an all-night buffet), and flies. Particularly flies.

The mosquito bites are painful, but it is the flies that are the biggest problem. We have a lovely backyard here, and we’d like to eat outside. But, the flies have been so plentiful and so aggressive that they’ve been driving us inside. The first time we tried to have dinner in the yard, we found the flies massing like a phalanx on the other side of the table from us. At any moment we expected to get mugged. I had visions of them grabbing the plates and flying off with them. Sort of UFO meets Yogi Bear’s picnic basket.

I tried to at least reduce their numbers by purchasing two traps. These are basically just plastic bags full of water plus some really foul smelling scent attractant. The flies get in but they can’t get out again. They drop eventually from heat and exhaustion and drown in the water.

We had one in Albuquerque and it worked well. It kept our backyard pretty clear of the nasty little brutes. So, I figured if I could got two for our yard here in Texas, we’d be fine. I mean, how could it miss?

Answer: by a country mile. Apparently Texas isn’t like New Mexico. Its supply of black flies is, it seems, infinite. Its reservoirs of pests cannot be plumbed by modern man. Or woman, for that matter. One of the traps I’ve got in the backyard now contains a layer of dead flies, floating in the water in the bag, that is fully an inch thick.  And they just keep coming.

I guess the only thing to do is to wait out the fly season. Maybe by September, we’ll be able to dine, again, al fresco, as opposed to Al Insect. But that leaves me the question of what to do with a bag full of drowned flies.

Here’s a thought. Austin has bridge which is famous for its bat colony. Maybe I could drop the flies off there as a sort of gift. You know…

Kinda like an insectivore-ish version of Grubhub. Except without tipping. And no App required.