Well, now we know it's spring, we had the first fly of the season in the house.

Except for when we had the "plague o'flies" from two years ago, I'm not much on hunting down flies that have gotten into the den, even if they are annoyingly flying in front of the lights. We don't leave food hanging about, so there's nothing for Mr. Fly to eat or drink. Eventually he's just going to drop dead somewhere. If he lights, I'll whap him with a flyswatter.

The problem is, somewhere along the line Willow got terrified of flies. I think one stung her on the nose several years back and she's been neurotic about them ever since, which is odd, because she will pounce on and kill palmetto bugs and other crawlies.

Last year we'd gotten her to the point where we made a game out of the fly; she'd "point" it and I'd kill it. Well, she regressed over the winter. She took one look at Mr. Fly and decamped to the kitchen.

Last year we had the wall-mounted lamps over the sofa, and could usually catch the fly on the inside of the lampshade (which explains why we had to buy new lampshades last year). This year we have the new halogen lamps, which are hot and provide no perch. So the little wretch just kept flying back and forth, out of the reach of the trusty flyswatter, occasionally making forays to around James' computer--and the television.

That nice, big wide screen gave me an idea. I shut off all the other lights, leaving the television on. Next thing I knew, there was a black dot on the screen. Whap! Ex-fly.

Now here's where it got odd. Last year, if she was upstairs when the fly was dispatched, Wil would hear the whap of the fly swatter and run downstairs to get her "treat." This time she had to be called downstairs, nuzzled the fly, and then ran back upstairs--almost as if we didn't kill the right fly. We had to coax her downstairs and literally hold her down, and she was trembling! But there was only one fly.

Absolutely bizarre.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:39:00 AM

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