shoo fly

The view from our rental in Chincoteague in 2021.

When I unlocked the door to our vacation rental on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 2021, there was a fly in the foyer. Focused on keeping mosquitos outside — we had learned the previous year how bad the mosquitoes can be on and around Chincoteague Island — I quickly stepped in and shut the door behind me. I brushed the fly away and dropped the first load of stuff from our car.

I remember this moment clearly. I know that the fly was already in the house when we arrived. This is relevant to know as this story unfolds.

My husband and I went in and out several times as we unloaded and settled in. Each time we were diligent about opening and closing the door quickly. We really didn't want mosquitoes in the house. That's what we were thinking about — the mosquitoes.

The next day there were three flies in the house. We noticed a fly swatter in a closet and put it to good use.

The next day there were a dozen flies. They all seemed to congregate in three places: a particular bathroom window, the screen doors in the primary bedroom, and the screen doors in the living room. But the majority of them really liked that bathroom window. We used the fly swatter and also opened the screen doors to shoo out the pests.

On day 4 there were dozens of flies in the house. Luckily they were slow-moving, so my hero went into the bathroom where they congregated, closed the door, and wielded the flyswatter like a samurai with his sword. He killed every fly he could, then cleaned up and sanitized the aftermath. After that, we went out for the day.

When we returned, there were dozens of flies in the bathroom window again. I went in and repeated the samurai’s carnage from that morning, then scrubbed the battlefield after that.

On day 5 there were easily a hundred flies in the bathroom window. We shut the door and went out to buy fly tape. Years ago, one of our offspring left a door open in our house and we quickly had a fly infestation. We learned then that fly tape is the way to go in this situation.

We hung a couple of strips of fly tape in the bathroom window and shut the door. In the rest of the house, we continued shooing flies out through the screen doors and using the fly swatter as necessary.

That evening we checked the fly tape and saw that it was working as expected, so we closed the bathroom door and ignored the situation overnight.

The next morning, the fly tape was full and there were far fewer flies in the window. We noticed fewer flies in the rest of the house too. We replaced the fly tape with fresh strips and closed the bathroom door again.

This process continued for two more days until there were zero flies in the house. The rest of our time in Chincoteague was fly-free inside and we left the vacation rental knowing we hadn't left pests for the next vacationers. Our theory is that the first fly we encountered was let in either by the previous people who rented the house or the rental company's cleaning crew.

And in spite of our initial concerns, neither one of us got a single mosquito bite on that trip.