Hoover the fruit flies

The things you never knew about common domestic appliances.

Take the vacuum cleaner for instance. I always thought the vacuum cleaner was a machine to suck dust and dirt off the floor and furniture.

A reasonable assumption you may think, but it turns out that this suck-up-the-dirt mentality is a narrow worldview which limits the potential of a vacuum cleaner and its user.

Why would anyone settle for using a boring old vacuum cleaner to do the boring old job of dirt sucking, when it can be transformed into a weapon of mass destruction to be used in an epic battle of good verses evil?

I’m not making this up. I’m not even exaggerating. This epic battle actually occurred in my house the other night.

I was upstairs in my unheated garret pecking away on my keyboard when I first heard the noise. It was coming from the kitchen.

The Hoover, I thought. In the kitchen? At 10 o’clock at night? That can’t be right. So I went downstairs to investigate.

That’s when I saw spotted He Who Can’t Be Named waving the nozzle through the air like a knight would wield his sword.

“What on earth are you doing?” I shouted over the Hoover’s loud motor.

He looked over his shoulder and switched it off. “Solving a problem,” he replied, using that tone of purpose he sometimes gets when he thinks he’s doing something important.

Before I could ask what that meant, he switched it on again and began swooping and lunging at the air above the fruit bowl. He used to be a national-caliber fencer and had all the moves.

He managed to speak over the Hoover without shouting. “I’m dealing with the fruit flies.”

Huh? Was I to understand that this man was murdering fruit flies with the Hoover?

Yes, apparently. This is exactly what he was doing. He was sucking the fruit flies into the nozzle of the Hoover to make them disappear.

He’d heard a man on a radio phone-in explaining this method dealing with fruit flies. No doubt, the radio man was another aspiring domestic knight in shining amour.

As He Who Can’t be Named jousted and sparred with fruit flies, I looked at the small bowl of vinegar with the perforated plastic wrap spread over the top. My strategy.

Was this not good enough? Fast enough? Or was I just missing the point?

I mean, where was the fun and adventure in baiting fruit flies with a bowl of vinegar?

He Who Can’t be Named was doing much more than ridding the kitchen of a pest. This was a fight to the death, a man-verses-nature sort of battle. With the Hoover In the kitchen. At ten o’clock at night.

When he was finished, he put the nozzle down and asked me to scan for fruit flies. There wasn’t one left standing or flying. He looked pleased with himself. He’d won the epic battle.

“Well then,” he said. “My work here is done.” And then he but the Hoover away.

glethbridge@herald.ca

Freelance damsel Gail Letbridge appreciates the efforts of her knight and his deadly Hoover. Visit her blog: giftedtypist.com