Hunting Fruit Flies

For the last day or so, I've been swatting at fruit flies in the kitchen.  Just now, one joined me at the computer.  I have become an obsessed hunter, like a cat chasing a horse fly or Rainsford and Zaroff hunting one another in The Most Dangerous Game.  This morning alone, I've dedicated at least half an hour to crushing those nearly invisible buggers with my bare hands.

"Whack!"  I try again to catch one of the remaining flies, but it's to no avail.  "Clap!"  I try stopping one mid-flight by catching it between my palms.  What has been most frustrating during this early morning hunting season is that each time I kill one of the last two fruit flies and think, "Ah, ha!  Only one more," another appears.  The pesky insects seems able to clone themselves in air.

Fruit flies are annoying, yes, but this simple fact does not explain my persistence in tracking the fruit flies' flights through the kitchen, alarming the cats with the crashing sounds I make as I smack the counter, the stove top, the refrigerator door, the toaster, the waffle iron, the ledge of the sink.  I am having my own private taping of Man vs. Wild, and I fully intend to defeat the wild.  Fruit flies, watch out.  Nothing else, not even knitting, interests me right now.  It's your soul I am after.

Or...maybe, it's some control that I'm after.  Worrying about fruit flies in the kitchen and defeating them, only millimeters long, is a reprieve from the rest of the world, where I am one of billions of fruit flies.