At least once a day for the past several days, the density of drain flies per cubic inch of kitchen space reaches the critical mass at which we decide: It’s time.
It’s time to go to the closet and retrieve our most reliable means of defense.
It’s time.
For the vacuum.
One of us—usually A.—will get it. He’s the original believer: They can’t escape the vacuum.
(Today I saw he sealed them in with painters’ tape. Just in case. We’ve learned not to trust our instincts with this batch of drain flies.)
And then we will replace the floor attachment with what I’ve just learned is called the “crevice tool.”
And then we will aim. We will be careful to have the crevice tool seal around the drain fly so we’re as likely to catch it as possible. (We will learn from our mistakes.)
We will be self-conscious about any neighbors peering in, wondering why we’re aiming our vacuums like rifles around our kitchen.
And we will collect as many drain flies as we can. All the ones on the walls, the cabinets, the blinds, the window frames, the light fixtures, the oven door—as long as they don’t see us coming. We might even get an occasional fly who zooms around in mid-air. But those? Those are the devious ones. The hardest to catch. And we worry that they’re the ones reproducing.
Maybe by next week, the flies won’t be so easy to catch.
Hopefully by then, we will have found out where they nest.
In the meantime, A. has cleaned out all the drains. We will leave almost nothing perishable (and certainly nothing sweet) out. We will clean up each night.
And we will hope that, tomorrow, this war of attrition will be over.
As long as it’s in our favor.
This Glass Has Water 