One of the places I lived in in Honolulu was an old garage with a loft, toilet and shower. The garage and the house that it belonged to were set to be demolished sometime in the future. For this reason and one other reason, the rent for the garage was only five dollars a month. The other reason was that the roof and walls had lots of holes in them. Of course this was a problem when it rained, but the floor was cement and I found a place to position the bed so it wouldn't be attacked by raindrops.

Anyhow, flies could come and go as they pleased. To pass time I used to practice catching them with my hand--not swatting or smashing them, just catching them alive. It wasn't long before I perfected a technique on catching them. I am basically against killing things except for blood sucking misquotes and killers of human beings. Therefore, after I would catch a fly, I would gently put my hand out of one of the holes in my wall and let it go.

One day a stupid inspiration came over me--I took the fly I caught, cupped it in my hands and shook it up and down the way a bartender shakes martinis. I then walked to the door, opened it, and threw the fly out into the sunset. It wobbled away and flew in a very crooked manner until it was out of sight.

From the next day there was never another fly in my hole ridden house. I figure the fly went and told all its buddies that my place was not the place to go to. Whereas, if I had killed the fly it could not have gone back and spread the word to its buddies--a dead fly tells no tales.

I have since tried this technique in other places in Hawaii and in Japan and the results have been the same--no more flies. Apparently if you kill a fly, it can tell no other flies about it. But if you scare a fly, it will go back and spread the word to other flies and they will use their better judgment and forget about the place--really!

I was even thinking about opening up a de-flying company--but I never got around to it. Try it, it really works. If you know how to catch flies with your bare hand, you're in. If you don't know how to catch flies with you bare hand, you can find the fly catching technique on the "Questions to Robert Red-Baer"? page. Click here to go to the exact place on that page.