Bags O' Water and Sparkly Collars

OK, since just about everyone asked about the sparkly vs. fly thing mentioned in my last post, I’m going to tell you what I’ve always been told: Bags of water (sparkly in sunlight) refract the light and mess with the fly’s vision and that keeps them away. Just to check and see if there was anything in this, I Googled. Apparently it’s not a scientifically confirmed thing, but a lot of restaurants use it and it’s a widely spread home remedy. I did find a blog entry on it from The Hardware Aisle which is interesting (although the ad was annoying until I figured out how to close it). Einstein’s cronies may not find the experiment scientifically acceptable, but hey, as long as you tie them well enough and make sure there are no holes in the bag, it’s not going to hurt to try. Oh yes, you might want to point out to any children in the area that they are not to be used as target practice, even if they are just thowing their pick up sticks at them like tiny javalins.

The sparkly collar is a different version of this. I think they must have adapted it because tying ziplock baggies full of water to your dog is not a very practical solution, even if it does provide him with a ready source of drinking water at all times. If the bambling against the body didn’t drive them up the wall, just imagine the chaos when they lay down on top of them. On your new carpet. Or wooden floor. Good idea. Thus, sparkly collar it is. Today we tried the cheapo version: aluminium foil. Wrap the foil around the dog’s collar. /instructions. It worked to a point. Just as with the homemade remedy I mixed up, it keeps them off part of him, but not all. They still crawl around in his eyes and nose which is what annoys him and disgusts me. However, sticking clove oil in my nose would send me up the wall within a relatively short space of time, so you can imagine what it would do to poor Mr. Sooper Sensitive “I prefer eau de horse manure” Nose. Maybe I should make him a whole suit out of aluminium foil. That might keep them off, even if it did give the dog psychological problems.

Frankly, I do have another theory about the sparkly collar thing: I think the flies see the collar, think “OMG another Barbie Worshipper” and fly off in disgust. Just think about it from a fly’s point of view; masses of Barbies are bought, played with and tossed, so after however many years Barbie has been with us (the first year was already too much Barbie, frankly) all of the landfills are full of them, crowding out the good bits of trash. Flies can’t eat or breed on plastic. They prefer things like banana skins and moldy socks for that. If we keep on buying Barbies and putting them in landfills, the flies will eventually have nothing left to live off of and become extinct.

This leaves us with the philosophical questions of Which is worse, the Barbie or the Fly? Is a Barbie still silent if there’s no one around to hear it be silent or does it start screaming its head off in rage as soon as there is no human in the near vicinity? Would the plastic used to make a Barbie have preferred to have become a plastic stitch holder or knitting needle had it been given the choice. Deep. Deep I tell you. Just about as deep as your local landfill.