Summer Flies

Not actual size

That could be a pun.  Summer always did seem to fly by when I was younger.  I can't say that it has slowed down as I age, but it does seem to be more miserable with the heat and the drought (except when my grandson comes over to mow the yard; then it rains--or threatens to rain).  Another misery that seems to be worse this year is the flies.  

The common housefly is all too common this year.  We had a bit of an invasion earlier in the summer, wherein my great granddaughter and I competed to kill every fly that we saw.  It was actually rather fun, and it brought back memories of East Africa.  

My late husband and I were given a house (duplex, lower floor) by the company he worked for in Dar es Salaam.  The living room had a sitting area with a built in divan shaped like a horseshoe.  There were windows on two sides of the room and ventilation slats.  The flies were everywhere--everywhere in East Africa.  My husband, both handy and clever, bought mosquito netting (screen wire for windows was not available in Dar right then) and stapled it to the outside of the windows.  That protected us from mosquitos for the most part, but flies are quite clever in finding a way into the house.  We had several fly swatters, and, lacking TV or other entertainment, we often sat in the living room in the evening, talking and killing flies.  I recall with some pride my "winning score" of five flies with one swat.

I would usually sweep up the day's debris and the dozen or more dead flies we had killed and dump it all in the trash can before we ended the evening and went to sleep.  A few times, of course, I was tired (or lazy!) and left the pile to be dealt with in the morning.  After a while, I noticed, when I did that, that the flies were missing from the pile.  I had thought they were surely dead the night before, but apparently some of them must have recovered and flown elsewhere.  

One evening the mystery was solved.  We heard a splat sound from the kitchen.  I ran in to see what had happened and saw the kitchen gecko on the floor.  He normally lived on the ceiling, but, it seems, he had been overindulging in the free banquet that we were providing in the evening's trash pile.  He had apparently gotten too fat for the little suckers on his feet to hold him on the ceiling.  So, splat!

This summer, we had a second infestation of flies.  Tiny red ones.  They were a misery, and they were too small to hit with a fly swatter.  I eventually searched the internet to find out about red house flies and discovered fruit flies.  The apple in the fruit bowl!  Summer entrances and exits, with the door held open too long, and that feast in the fruit bowl had attracted a mama and her babies.  Not feeling sentimental, I found an light trap with sticky inserts to catch them.   When that didn't work fast enough, I discovered that a bowl of apple cider vinegar with a little dish soap to break the surface tension of the liquid might work.  It did, like a charm.  

As I am preparing for another adventure in New York, I thought to clean up the light trap and insert a sheet of stickum in case any more surprise visitors show up in my absence.  The used one was fully covered with the remains of dozens of those pesky fruit flies.  Sadly, when I removed the sticky part of the trap, I found a little lizard (deceased) stuck to the surface on the back side.

I'm a little surprised that there is a lizard in my house.  Among other things, Biscuit may be old and house bound, but she is a hunter, even if it's just to catch whatever it is that is moving under the blanket (my foot!).  Still, I'm a little sad that my light trap caught the lizard.  If the trap hadn't been there, maybe the little lizard could have feasted as our gecko in Dar es Salaam did.  Maybe if nature had been allowed to do its thing, the fruit flies would have eventually succumbed to the lizard's hunting prowess.  I have to say that it would have been miserable for me, so I'm not going back to nature on this issue.  

In fact, I bought a half gallon of the apple cider vinegar.  I'll be glad when all this heat is over.  In the meantime, I am prepared with fly swatters and apple cider vinegar.  Still, I might give the light trap a rest, and see how it goes.  

IPCC, What Are We Waiting For?

What are we waiting for?

I'm organizing my files.  I used to say, "I can't die until I get my filing done."  I'm not particularly getting ready for death as much as I am just prematurely buried in paper, both electronic and the actual made-from-trees stuff.  My new treasure is a 4T hard drive and its partner, a Canon desktop scanner.  Progress is occurring!  

The thing about organizing, though, is that you find things you forgot you had, like the little booklet--IPCC in a Nutshell--that I wrote in 2019.  That's a collection of a series of posts I published on Facebook about the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Five years on, the recommendations still apply, but they seem so minor in the face of the changes that have occurred in such a short time.  There are new reports now coming from the IPCC, and the Sixth Assessment Report seems to be the newest.  It's bleak enough that my little booklet seems like a relic of a long ago past, where filling the recycling bin would be enough to make a difference.  

Closer to home, so to speak, the US seems to be issuing NCA5--the fifth National Climate Assessment.  This happens every four years, and a review draft was issued about a year ago.  It seems that the final version is now out.  It also seems that the final version is amazingly optimistic.  Here are the key messages on mitigation:

• Successful Mitigation Means Reaching Net-Zero Emissions
• We Know How to Drastically Reduce Emissions
• To Reach Net-Zero Emissions, Additional Mitigation Options Need to Be Explored
• Mitigation Can Be Sustainable, Healthy, and Fair
• Governments, Organizations, and Individuals Can Act to Reduce Emissions

I say amazingly, because I know that agriculture is one of our big GHG emitters, and Texas (All Hail the Mighty State!) just fought back on every single key message with Proposition 1, cunningly touted as "Food for Texas."  Likely to favor agribusiness, protect polluters, and defang environmental regulations, the Right to Farm amendment to the Texas Constitution passed on November 7 with 79% approval.  (Not mine.)

It does help that most of our major cities have taken their own steps to get to net zero emissions (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio--and Austin--but not Fort Worth).  Since Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are three of the ten largest cities in the US, this is not a small thing.  On the other hand, The Right to Farm amendment was directly aimed, in part, at cities and towns that incorporate land that someone wants to put to agricultural use without regard for the concerns of neighboring residents for animal welfare, use of pesticides, etc.  Given the tendency of Texas cities to sprawl, this is also not a small thing.

I have been focusing on individual action, but it may be time to look at group action.  The Austin Community Climate Plan bears a closer look.  Passed in 2015, there will have been subsequent audits and adjustments to the plan, such as this one from 2020.  And a new version of the plan focuses on climate equity.  In all of these plans, there is collaboration between the various levels of government, the community, and interested parties (industry, business, and advocacy coalitions).  As Ethicals, I think we can find some partners of our own in this process to help us learn more about what we can do--and what we need to do--to change the message from "Food for Texas" and the "Right to Farm" to regenerating the planet with food for everyone.