Now where there are equines, there are flies.
And where you have an open door policy that allows Claire to poke her head and neck in through the basement door, you get flies in the house.
Now, I’ve always been a live and let live kind of guy. I use herbal necklaces around Claire and Honey’s necks to keep the flies away from their eyes and mouths, and leave their swishing tails and stomping feet to deal with the rest of their natural annoyances.
Although, Lisa has talked me into hanging fly bags in the barn to maintain a higher comfort level. And I’d do anything to make Claire & Honey’s lives easier.
Lisa has one of those electronic fly plug ins that lures them to their pastel colored deaths in the living room.
I personally don’t mind flies, even when they land on me, although if they bite me then all bets are off.
However, I do not like it when the flies fall into my coffee. Word is out that I make a great cuppa joe. At best, when they fall in it ruins a good cup of coffee and then the always rescued caffeinated flies buzz a little more pronounced around my office. They sound like V2 rockets on their way to a London explosion.
Now nature has also blessed NoCo with natural resolution to the fly problem. Large spiders. The large spiders are usually found hanging around under my back deck, which is fine because that is where a lot of flies congregate as they are waiting to get past the velvet rope and into the basement.
Sometimes, one of the large spiders magically appears upstairs, and Lisa insists I remove them to the barn, or face execution by dish towel. Both flies and me. Fair enough.
But those arachnids that set up shop inside the basement are given free reign as my natural antidote to the summer fly issue – and surprisingly, there are sometimes winter flies, but nothing like the summertime.
I tend to name them all Charlotte.
Well, this summer, my main Charlotte set up camp on my office windowsill.
Where she spread a magnificent web that, interestingly enough, incorporates my Paris Bookshop totem – did I mention that one day I would love to do a reading at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris – and luckily for me, captures those decaffeinated flies that fall below the Darwinian survival scale.
Charlotte spends a lot of time staring out the window at Claire when my magical creature comes by to compel me to give her a snack using her Vulcan mind meld method.
The rest of the time she’s hard at work.
So, I have not swallowed any flies this summer.
A risk we all know ends badly.
The other side benefit, is that Charlotte and her magnificent Web, keeps Lisa from wandering into my office.
This has reduced my pestered level dramatically.
Charlotte never ventures off her windowsill, and never bothers me or the Beagle Brothers, so I am thrilled with this arrangement.
I hope Charlotte one day surprises me with some words, maybe in French, like “une librairie” stretching across her silk tapestry, but even if she doesn’t she has forever earned my respect and gratitude.
Until then I like to peek over my computer monitor each day to check on Charlotte. One more enjoyable character here at Casa Claire. Couldn’t ask for better company.
Well, Claire and Honey are at the back door, demanding I refill their snack trays, so I have to get moving.
I also have the farrier coming for their mani-pedis. And rounds before that.
So, I will leave you fine, five readers to enjoy your Saturday – get those errands done first thing.
Maybe you’ll find some time to read a book or two. A surge in readership for The Claire Saga – with corresponding reviews – would certainly contribute to my campaign to bring that epic story to the big screen.
Don’t you want to be able to look at your less than insider friends and say with a wink – the book(s) was/were better!?
It’s going to happen. I can feel it in my bones. Its the one feeling among those 206 structural pieces that doesn’t remind me how old I am.
But no matter what we all get up to, let us make this day a great one.
