Monday, September 18, 2006

Bored of the Flies

I have been experiencing a manifestation of fruit flies in my car.
It is very annoying, and has been going on for about five days or so. But I [hopefully] put an end to it, today.
Lately, every time I get in the car a little swarm of fruit flies start swirling around.
I thought they were coming through the vents. It’s enough to make you want to drive into the nearest bridge abutment, I swear!
And I mean…. → “I swear!”
So, of course, I checked under the seats. I checked under the mats, everywhere. No sign of their hotel! No little footprints. No tiny beer bottles strewn about. No sign of campfire…
Until today.
I was going to give a co-worker a ride to his bus-stop, and as he was getting in my car I said, “Now, don’t freak out. But when we get in there, a bunch of little flies are going to go mental.”
As he opened the passenger door he said “Look, you idiot!” and pointed to the one place I had not thoroughly searched.
A little place between the seat and the door.
And there it was. A mummified plum. Or something.
And flies. Flies in a state of heavenly bliss.
So of course, I cleaned up the mess. There’s now only a few stragglers left behind. They will probably eat each other and then the strongest and most vicious among their herd will die a lingering death, trying to eat the dashboard. GOOD!
OK, so part of the mystery is now solved. I had dropped some sort of fruit-thing on the floor somehow, or one of my passengers did. Fine.
But as I drove away and came here to Starbucks, my logician’s mind began to ask the inevitable, deeper questions.
Like...
1) How did a fruit fly find out about this? Where was this fly in the first place? Driving around with me for the last few years, hoping I would throw a plum his way?
I don’t get it.
But secondly…
2) How did all the others find out about it? I mean, I lock my car doors at night! There’s no way that that one fly could have gotten out and told a pile of friends, even. Much less, SO MANY friends.
And I’ve been killing them for days.
How is this fly population replenished?
After gorging themselves, have they been spending the last four or five nights in MY BACK SEAT? So to say?

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1 comment:

Stefanie said...

It appears from a little googling, if you bought the fruit before it was ripe at the grocery store, the flies came "from the wild."