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On Being The Horseman of Death
Jun. 17th, 2006 08:18 amI don't like this eco-friendly version of Raid that I bought. While I'm pleased to buy green whenever I can, the trade-off is macabre in the extreme.
The environmentally friendly stuff works neither well nor swiftly, so that the flies do a prolonged, writhing dance of agonizing death that I'm disinclined to dispatch. First their flight is affected and they air-hobble to the window sill. There, they twitch frantically, buzz in searing pain, flip onto their backs, sometimes joining the corpses of their dead bretheren that I've neglected to clean up, their little legs flailing. Then they have fly-sized grand mal seizures, bucking and jolting in their death throes, finally falling still, but with random leg twitches that can go on for 7 or 8 minutes, which is longer than living with myself is possible.
Real Raid doesn't work that way. So I'm left with a conundrum. Efficient poison kills flies swiftly and as humanely as possible. Eco-friendly "poison" does the least harm to the environment at the expense of the creatures being killed, who can't help that they are flies, but who nonetheless must die. That is a no-win situation if ever there was one.
Come to think about it, I don't own a proper fly swatter. While I don't care for the indignity of fly swatting or the miserable success:failure ratio, I could justify it for the cardio benefits, if nothing else.
The environmentally friendly stuff works neither well nor swiftly, so that the flies do a prolonged, writhing dance of agonizing death that I'm disinclined to dispatch. First their flight is affected and they air-hobble to the window sill. There, they twitch frantically, buzz in searing pain, flip onto their backs, sometimes joining the corpses of their dead bretheren that I've neglected to clean up, their little legs flailing. Then they have fly-sized grand mal seizures, bucking and jolting in their death throes, finally falling still, but with random leg twitches that can go on for 7 or 8 minutes, which is longer than living with myself is possible.
Real Raid doesn't work that way. So I'm left with a conundrum. Efficient poison kills flies swiftly and as humanely as possible. Eco-friendly "poison" does the least harm to the environment at the expense of the creatures being killed, who can't help that they are flies, but who nonetheless must die. That is a no-win situation if ever there was one.
Come to think about it, I don't own a proper fly swatter. While I don't care for the indignity of fly swatting or the miserable success:failure ratio, I could justify it for the cardio benefits, if nothing else.