After coming back from lunch with Peter in town I found myself locked out of the annex and so I hung out at Sarah and Chris’ place for most of the afternoon. We decided to go for a walk, and were intercepted by Peter in a three-wheeler, so I joined him going home. I had left some things at Sarah and Chris’ annex and had borrowed their keys to get in, and by the time they came over to get them, Peter had left and I was home doing laundry. By the time they arrived at the gate it was dark and Peter had left the porch light on, but unfortunately it was a night when swarms of mayflies spawned, and when I did the typical procedure of darting out the door I walked through a cloud of buzzing, fluttering creatures. I gave the keys back to Sarah, but getting back into the annex was the problem – the flies were all around the door, and I had to walk right through them to unlock the door and get in. I tried twice, but the disgusting soft fluttering on my neck and face forced me to run away and shake off the flies that had gotten stuck in my hair or on my shirt. On the third try I made it, but even though I slammed the door after me, about thirty flies came in and immediately went to the lamp on the wall of the living room. At this point I had visions of Peter coming home and seeing a swarm of flies and freaking out – maybe he has a hatred of mayflies similar to that of his hatred for mosquitoes. I ran around the house turning off lights and closing doors, trying to contain the invasion, and waiting for their inevitable death. Mayflies are fairly grotesque creatures – on occasional evenings they spawn out of piles of leaves and flutter around light and water sources until their wings fall off and they slither around, doing who knows what, until they die. So about twenty minutes later there were about thirty mayfly corpses slithering around, radiating out from the pile of wings. I managed to contain the slithering ones (presumably trying to find suitable place to reproduce), and then swept the pile of them out the door, and this time there was no swarm around the door since I turned the light off, and since the flies had all lost their wings by that point anyway. And Peter never got word of it.
Some informational reading about the insects
Dangolla
