Drosophilae. Part Deux.

This is what they look like when they're dead. I learned that in Genetic 256. It's what happens when you choloroform them for too long. Between that and having them rise from their inebriated state and fly away. To the time-pressed pre-med, needing to breed white-eyes with white eyes for the sake of getting into a good medical school a female escapee is worth crying over.

This is a classic example of desensitizing a fear of insects. The 4AM visits to the underground dungeon they call the fly lab. The smell of fly-fodder and choloroform. The chipped ceramic bowls of fly soup; unused and discarded corpses crowded in a thin layer of soapy water. And flies. Everywhere. Your skin crawled. Like formication in an alcoholic undergoing withdrawal. And under your microscope - every detail of the intoxicated, the sedated, the dead, and the smeared. Really you get used to it. That's the scary part.

And so they return. For round two, but this time in my kitchen. Drain flies - they call them. And surely they must be because there is no other source for them. I have taken out the trash, scrubbed the floor, poured 2 bottles of Draino down the sink. But they still return. Whence do they come? What do they want?

They have nearly driven me to insanity. Such that killing them has become a sport. Like darts. Or racketball. It has become an art. Some advice from them much-wizened? It is preferable to wait until they are on a surface, then come upon them quickly. When you catch them between your hands in mid-air, you must smear your hands together, to make sure they do not escape between the fingers. And the feeling of satisfaction at watching a dead fly roll off your hand and into the drain. Exhilarating.

According to the exterminator website they will leave by winter. But they've already mostly gone. Maybe then I'll take up rat-trapping. Stay tuned.