Waxing Frustrated

I was at my wit's end.

My home has the usual amount of clutter. A few newspapers, some dirty clothes piled up, conveniently enough, in the corner next to the clothes hamper, and a microwave oven which should probably be wiped down soon. In general, I keep my home clean.

And that's what had me in a snit.

You see, I've been a fan of a certain furniture polish which smells like lemons. It's a nice fragrance, reminding me of warmer days when it's snowing outside and the world seems to turn in early. In the summer, however, it isn't such a pleasant thing to use the polish.

That's because the polish had attracted fruit flies. Not a few, mind you. Enough to make me realize that a full scale invasion has occurred.

I killed perhaps two hundred, not that I kept a body count tally. No matter how many I wiped out, more seemed to have flown in to replace them. It had become entirely frustrating, knowing that they had such air superiority early on. I swatted. I batted. Once, in an act of desperation, I even chased one around the coffee table with a can of Right Guard Sport Scent. At the end of the first campaign the fruit flies had increased their numbers exponentially.

Then I decided that, if spider spray could kill spiders it would virtually dissolve fruit flies. Dumping pesticides into the air of my home was an act of desperation for me; the thought of achieving a pyrrhic victory over the pesky things at the cost of my lungs' healthy functioning wasn't something I was willing to leave to chance. Not that it made any sense, but in order to ventilate my home for my own safety, I opened the front door.

You can see where this is going.

Did I mention that the fruit fly population had become exponential? It was like the insect version of the big bang theory as untold numbers of fruit flies exploded in to the cause of their brethren courtesy of my involuntary open door policy. In a last ditch effort, I set aside the furniture polish. I had had a somewhat radical thought: spider spray is kind of greasy. Furniture polish is also kind of greasy. Therefore,...

I opened the front door again, spraying the doorway with spider spray in two-minute intervals -long enough to keep the fruit fly national guard at bay long enough to set up a protective barrier on my furniture. Stepping back and forth between the front doorway and the living room furniture brought to mind the footwork which fighters learn early on in their careers. Either that, or I was discovering the Samba.

It worked. The few surviving fruit flies retreated, preferring to take their chances with the birds. The furniture was nicely dusted, even if somewhat toxic (not that I lick my furniture). In the days that passed, I resumed using the furniture polish; the insecticide had long since gassed out, and was no longer present on the end table or the TV stand. The fruit flies' leaders must have had a joint chiefs meeting to examine cost-benefit analyses regarding whether or not to mount a counterattack. The decision was that they preferred to move on and breed an entirely new invasion force against a neighbor. Victory had been accomplished, peace of mind, achieved.

My furniture positively glistens now. Interestingly, the wax buildup on the end table had been corrected. Best of all, it isn't covered with hundreds of little winged casualties.

It was good to return to the great scent of lemons.