Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Lord of the Flies

If there is one drawback to living in Austria, specifically Innsbruck, then it has to be the FLIES.  This is something the tourist board doesn't want us to tell you, but I must be honest that ever since the snow melted, those 'pesky buggars' have been EVERYWHERE... on food, in our homes, in our cars... just EVERYWHERE!

During this ongoing battle between all Götzenites and the flies, many ground-breaking techniques have been developed to combat their numbers.  One of the most effective is the "hover clap" - where you clap your hands 3 to 6 inches above a sitting fly.  As the fly goes to escape, he is caught in your clap and either smooshed (technical term) or knocked unconscious.  The other is the "day-timer-of-death" - in which a skinny, flexible object such as an average day-timer can be used to smash the flies against a hard surface.  Christie has mastered this second technique with deadly precision.

Here is footage from today's battle, in which an open door allowed 32 flies to sneak into our apartment within a matter of minutes.  There were no survivors...
   

Christie Johnson: FLY HUNTER

~ J. Twice

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

whoa!!!! Rambo Christie----those flies cannot land without trembling and splatting at Christie's amazing quick strikes!!! GO GIRL!!!

michelleej said...

Ok, this is hilarious because I just killed AT LEAST 15 in our house and I found myself being reminded of how annoying the flies were in Germany! I was chuckling to myself remembering the infamous "Fly-B-Q" we went to one time there, never seen so many! I liked your suggestions for killing them because our fly swatter has been used so much that it's totally bent in half!