Home from work for Christmas
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Standing in the office wearing his coat, The Ranger was just about to set off for the staff Christmas dinner. As ever I was the last to leave having left all sorts of things to the final moment. The office as empty – snowflakes cut out by my colleagues from the pages of the staff magazine were twisting in the breeze, but otherwise all was still: computers off, heaters silent, the car park outside looking oddly depleted of vans.
Just then the phone rang. A moment of indecision: should I just walk off – after all, in theory, I was on leave. But, as ever, I couldn’t resist. On the other end of the line was laughing-boy from the call centre – “Ooo, I’ve got a right one for you here Ranger…” he chuckled, wisely not waiting for any reply before putting the call through. “Hello?” came a small voice. An elderly lady, sounding very worried, was on the line. First, of course, she established that she was indeed very old. “I am a pensioner, I’m 84 you know.” (Strangely, I’ve never had a caller start by saying “I’m of working age, I’m 42, you know!”). I sat down again – thoughts of my Christmas dinner rapidly receding. “I have lots of flies in my spare room!” Ah, now this was something I could answer. A few more gentle questions and I knew what my caller was describing: cluster flies – a generic name for a certain type of flies, usually Pollenia species. In the autumn, adults often come indoors in large numbers, or ‘clusters’, to overwinter, sheltering in roof-spaces, on the warm sides and roofs of houses, garages or in rarely-used rooms. Householders can find these visitors alarming, and pest-control firms do well from coming to kill them with insecticides. Needless to say, the council doesn’t have a cluster-fly spraying service, but councils do sometimes give advice and, as a last resort, refer reluctant fly-landlords to commercial services. So I began to reassure the lady that the flies were harmless, and advise her how to discourage them. But at that point she had a surprise in store:
“Discourage them? No, we like flies! We never use that room anyway.” “So tell me, why did you ring the council? How can we help you?” “Well, my husband said we should report them, so that’s what I’m doing. Now I know what they are I’ve no intention of killing them, young man. They can make their own way out in the spring, like they always do. I’ll wish you a merry Christmas, and thank you for your advice. Goodbye!”
…we like flies? I was shaking my head in disbelief. My last call of the year. I had assumed the worst. But fate had proven me wrong: instead of missing my festive dinner I was wished a merry Christmas by a fly-loving octogenarian. And I’ll wish to same to you and all Naturenet’s readers.