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On the surface I had a lovely afternoon yesterday. I returned from a good time volunteering with friends at a local museum and spent a productive afternoon finishing a lot of work. That’s just the surface story. In reality as the hours of the afternoon waned I was driven crazier and crazier, as a headache crept further and further into my skull. And it’s all my pets’ fault.
Well, just Chihiro and Cole. What did they do that made me insane? They chased house flies. I don’t know how so many flies got into my house, but there must have been about six or seven. I freed another one this morning and I’m praying that it was the last, and today won’t be another repeat of yesterday.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s exactly the thought my husband voiced when he came home yesterday, watched the dog and cat chase a fly (and me twitch over it on the couch) and asked me what the big deal was. It’s not, until you spend about four or five hours hearing a BUZZZZZ followed by a constant BAM! THWACK! POW! I might has well have been living in the panels of a comic book, and although it sounds cool, it’s actually not so great for concentration or peace of mind.
The presence of a house fly causes utter chaos. Chihiro and Cole both like to play chase and catch with them. However, in Chihiro’s case especially that latter part seems mostly to involve them throwing themselves bodily at the fly. Cole likes to jump as high as he can and attempt to smack it, and the velocity involved usually ends in a resounding thwack. Chihiro usually just ends up running as fast as she can to chase it and effectively body slamming the fly.
When this all started it was cute, even kind of funny, to watch my pets get so excited over a little house fly. The two of them are even sometimes successful at catching the flies, so I figure why not let them at it? This worked fine, at first.
After an hour or so, by the time we were on the third or fourth fly, I’d had enough. It’s hard to get anything done to the constant cacophony of BZZZ SMACK BAM! I went and killed the flies myself, then returned to my work.
Chihiro came and lay down and we spent a pleasant quarter of an hour sleeping and working, respectively. But soon it returned, the dreaded BUZZZZZZZ. The second she heard it Chihiro leaped up from her bed, the tags on her collar crying out for that fly in a furious jingle. She raced across the room, nails grasping for purchase on the hardwood floor with a desperate clack, and loudly clattered her way back and forth across the kitchen in pursuit of the fly.
Cole is at least a little quieter as he chases flies; only his occasional frustrated chirp and the THWACK of him leaping against the glass doors if he tries to jump after one causes any real noise. I don’t know why a house fly should excite Chihiro so much; she likes to go after bumblebees, too, I think it’s because they’re the only things she’s ever capable of catching. She never chased flies until after we got Cole and she observed him doing so, however, so perhaps it’s some kind of backwards pack behavior. I can only hope, for my own sanity, that yesterday was the end of it.
Do your pets love to chase house flies?
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