Rachel Wise: Flying in the face of summer

Rachel Wise

I didn't need the calendar to tell me it was the first day of summer. No, I already knew because there was a fly in my Jeep.

You know the one? That lone fly that gets into your vehicle, through closed windows and closed doors, and stays hidden until you are driving along and then ... bzzz ... performs a lazy fly-by past the end of your nose.

That fly.

You have to decide, as it's banking to the right in your nasal airspace, if you will take one hand off the wheel and swat at it, thus risking swerving across the road and maybe into a tree, or if you'll stare straight ahead, deny its existence and risk it landing on you, or worse - getting in your hair.

Because that's the real threat. Not only might it touch you, which would tickle and would put fly-germs on you, but it might get its bristly little limbs tangled in your hairdo.

It's a truly horrifying thought. Why, I don't know. It just is. So you flail at the airborne attacker with one hand while steering with the other, and it buzzes off. Briefly. Until you have both hands committed to negotiating a roundabout in peak traffic and there it is. Where? There! Nope, gone.

Now, you can't see the fly anymore but you know it's there. Your nerves are at full stretch, eyes darting from the road to the vehicle's interior and back again. It's there ... it's waiting ...

Bzzz ... another swoop, this time round the steering column and disappearing into the footwell. Is it burrowing into your shoe or about to crawl up your pants leg?

The suspense is awful. You briefly wonder when it got in the car. And why? There's nothing in the car a fly could live on, is there? Bzzz ... Ok that's it. You open a window, that'll suck the little blighter right out. Wait, wait, must be gone by now. Close the window.

Bzzz. Open the driver's window and leave it open longer this time. Your eyes are watering but you won't give in until you're sure your tormentor has been swept out onto the roadside to be eaten by magpies and mynah birds. After a few minutes you cautiously close the window. And wait. Nothing happens, no fly, mission accomplished. Until you spot it sitting on the passenger seat cleaning itself. Here's the next dilemma; do you leave it sitting there because at least it's not flying up your nose or into your ears, or do you attempt to swat it into oblivion and risk sending it back into flight mode?

Swat. Missed. You know how hard it is to swat a fly while standing on your two feet and using the appropriate tools? So why did you think you'd manage to kill this one - which had already proven itself smarter than average - while driving a car and wielding a CD cover? Only one thing to do - open all the windows. At once.

Gale-force winds rush through, you can no longer hear the stereo above the roar, your hair is whipping into knots and you can feel windburn on your cheeks. This time there's no giving in. This insect is being swept to its doom no matter what it takes. Chocolate bar wrappers you'd forgotten all about swirl through the car, a plastic bag and your favourite scarf are sucked out the rear window, the passenger's side seatbelt is whipping at the door frame and the pinetree-shaped air freshener rips from its moorings.

Just as your glasses start to flap on your face you decide - enough! The insect cannot have survived. Windows up, the silence is blissful.

Or is it? You can't see the fly, you can't hear the fly, but you know it's still there. It's going to be there all summer. Just the one fly.

That fly.

-Rachel Wise is a lifestyle block owner and community newspapers editor.

-Linda Hall is on leave.