On Jun 3, 2004, at 23:25, Elizabeth Ligeti wrote:
Fly screens are a necessity here in Oz. Flies are everywhere, all year round,
Flies were one's "constant companion" in Poland, though more in the village than in Warsaw; it was one of the "facts of life", God's will, what have you... You kept a "packa" (mmm... the dictionary translation is wrong; but it's one of those flexible squares on a stick?) handy all summer and most of winter and, before we discovered that kids would lick the fly-trap strips and poison themselves, we used those as well.
In Virginia (well... *Lexington*, to be precise; don't know about the rest of the State), we get flies some years, but not others. Our friendly exterminator (retained, and visiting monthly) says that flies need a 6-week of frost to incubate, and we don't always get it.
Mosquitoes. In Poland, they were plentiful, but only outdoors; they almost never came into the house. Here, it's the same; they happily congregate over patches of standing water (lotsa happiness there, the past few weeks <g>), especially in the shade. And they'll attack you, if you want to entertain people for supper on the deck... But, in the house? Takes an odd, schizo one, to come in, even with the door open... And then, trapped, the poor idiot just won't stop making noise, and God forbid it finds you (by your sweat, which you exude when annoyed); it'll bite, and bite, and bite, till it drops dead. Ditto bees and wasps and their like (can't remember the English terms). And June bugs, and 7-year locust, and...
OTOH... Fruit flies, ants, flour-moths, cockroaches, etc, don't seem to be aware that the window screens are supposed to keep them out (it's like the "deer crossing" signs on the highways; the deer don't seem to know where they're supposed to cross <g>); they're always with us, like "the poor"... Whenever the weather gets nice and "moist" (humid) -- which is most of the time -- and over 75degree Farenheit, they appear. It's, to use a Polish phrase, "here it's good, here I'll breed" (tu mi dobrze, tu sie bede rozmnazac) time, and screens don't make a blind bit of difference :)
Like Weronika (and Ann of Green Gables <g>), I like to hang out of my window, but can indulge only when I go back to Poland. Like Weronika (more, I suppose <g>), I resent having my lacemaking light blocked by the screens. We have compromised, my DH and I, to accomodate *both* (equally illogical) whims/superstitions... We've removed the screens from some of the windows, and simply never open those (whoever buys our house when we're gone will have to use a pneumatic hammer, but that's *their* problem <g>).
And we *respect* each other's beliefs -- however misguided -- that's what a good marriage is all about... :) The other day, when he opened an unscreened window, I simply closed it, and opened the screened half of it. And never pointed out that, in the 24 hrs (as it turned out) it took me to notice, we didn't have any more bugs invade the house than we usually do...
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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