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Adam Armour Mug 2019 ADAM ARMOUR
Adam Armour Mug 2019 ADAM ARMOUR
The housefly tapped against the kitchen window, blind-idiot bumping against the glass over and over as if asking some unseen creature on the other side to let it out.
I reached across the sink and struggled to slide the lower pane, which predates me by a good decade or more and seems to have grown increasingly obstinate with age, upward to allow the insect out of our home.
“Buzz buzz,” the fly told me, which I took to mean something along the lines of, “Get me the heck out of here.”
“Fine, then,” I said as I finally wiggled the window open. “We didn’t want you around anyway.”
But instead of zipping outdoorsas it had just moments ago seemed to desire more than rotting food or old poop or any of the other gross stuff flies love , the insect retreated back into the kitchen. It collided with my forehead as it passed , sending it careening along a wobbly path through the kitchen door and into our dining room.
“Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuzz,” it cried as it vanished into the other room.
I cursed the little booger’s indecisiveness and then turned back to the window. Even with a hard downward push, the thing refused to shut.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I told it. “A minute ago, you wanted nothing more than to keep your mouth shut. Now you’re refusing to close the darn thing?”
“Fine,” I said, then gripped both sides of the lower sash and went to work. It took a good minute or two of wiggling one side of the sash, then the other, then back again to finally reunite the bottom rail with the stool.
I’d just managed to close it when I spotted a pair of flies tapping at the panes.
“Where did you two come from?” I said.
“Buzz buzz buzz buzz,” they told me in unison. I took this to be a request for me to mind my own business and to open to flipping window.
“OK, OK,” I said. “Hold your horses.”
“Buzz buzz buzz buzz buuuuuuzzzzz,” they said. No doubt, this was to inform me that they weren’t horse-flies, actually, and that I should better acquaint myself with the various species in the order Diptera … there are more than 1 million, after all … before simply lumping them all into a single category.
“It’s a figure of speech,” I said, then spent five minutes in a furious battle of wills against the kitchen window.
The window finally open, the pair of not-horse-flies casually drifted from inside our tiny kitchen into the world at large to presumably live the few remaining hours of their lives 5 feet away from where I was standing.
“You going to give me trouble again?” I said to the window.
The window would have shrugged, but that would have required a willingness to move.
“That’s what I figured,” I said, then battled the lower sash back down to its seat against the frame. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and the muscles in my arms were beginning to protest all of this unexpected work.
“Buzz buzz buzz,” I heard from over my shoulder just as I’d managed to close the window for a second time.
“You again?” I said as the fly … the indecisive one … returned to the kitchen. It began bumping against the panes again.
“You know, I could just kill you,” I said. “You’re a fly. That’s not a crime.”
“Buzz buzz,” it told me curtly.
"This is the last time," I said. "I catch you in the kitchen again, I’m going to reconfigure your body into something that more closely resembles the remnants of a ketchup pack.”
“Buzz,” the fly said. I think we had an understanding.
“OK, window,” I said. “I know you like staying shut … unless you’re open. Then you like that, instead. But you’re sufficiently loosed up now. Let’s let this little guy out and then we can call it a day. That work for you?”
The window was clearly unmoved by my proposal.
The two of us wrestled for a bit, sweat now pouring from my face, until the window finally relented and opened a crack.
The fly hovered near the opening for a moment or two, as if maybe reconsidering its options.
“Nuh-uh,” I told it, then pushed the tiny creature through the opening with my palm.
I was washing the fly-filth from my hands when I heard a tapping at the window. A fly … and it looked suspiciously similar to the one I’d just released … was bumping against the outside of the glass, asking to be let in.
I told it to buzz off.
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ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.
Adam is the news editor and writes a weekly feature column.
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Our top headlines each morning, seven days a week, as well as each weekday afternoon.
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Our top headlines each morning, seven days a week, as well as each weekday afternoon.
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Get our top sports stories of the week each Sunday morning.
Weekly recaps during Mississippi's annual legislative session, plus breaking alerts and weekly updates throughout the year, from our state politics team.
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