Lord of the Flies

Every so often, an elderly couple comes to my basement and begins bickering. Well, they're not exactly elderly - early sixties, I'd guess - and it's not exactly a basement - it's the utility room adjacent to mine that merely looks like a basement, all cobwebby and dank, although it's actually on ground level - but these are mere technicalities, and the bickering certainly is bickering.

The couple, whom I'll call Earl and Madge, are charged with removing the trash from my unit (known half-affectionately by me as The Submarine) and the three other units in my building. They back their old maroon sedan up to the building, stomp around to the back door (frequently startling me at my computer as they pass my ground-level windows or, worse, catching me at my morning exercises, mid-twirl and half-naked), and proceed to argue and accuse their way through the plastic bags of trash and recyclables that accumulate just inside the back door.

What happens to the trash after this is anyone's guess. It almost certainly gets piled into the trunk of Earl and Madge's sedan, but where they dump it, and what happens to it between the collecting and the dumping, is a mystery. If only the Valley had a Trash Museum, like the good folks of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority have in Hartford, CT, I would have a much clearer picture of what happens to all those donut boxes, pie tins, watermelon husks, and empty bottles of Dan Akroyd wine that I carelessly toss into the appropriate receptacles.

If the Valley does build a Trash Museum, it should, like the Hartford Trash Museum, be located at a recycling plant where I could become entranced by the sight of quick-moving conveyor belts carrying plastic containers past lines of gloved and goggled men who knock things off the belt with great force and what seems like great arbitrariness. I could stare in wonder at the guy who pre-sorts the recyclables and thus has the enviable job of removing all the weird, unrecyclable items that somehow found their way into the plant - dresses, lamps, and god knows what else. When I tired of that, I could wander downstairs and take part in a low-stakes scavenger hunt in and around something called the Temple of Trash, or get one of the museum ladies to open up the compost boxes and show me a few red wigglers, little worms who are, in my experience, much more red than they are wiggly, and who really love corn cobs.

If the Valley did have a Trash Museum, it might even look something like this, but only through the lens of a low-resolution BlackBerry camera:





And then we would all go out for burritos and pie.

Sadly, however, there is no such educational facility in the immediate NoHo area, and so I am left to speculate with woeful imprecision as to what happens to my refuse after Earl and Madge have had their way with it.

Even this uncertainty would be a tolerable state of affairs compared to what has happened recently, however. For recently, within the last two weeks or so, Earl and Madge have disappeared.

I don't want to alarm anyone. This has happened at least once before, and after about three weeks and a couple of phone calls to the property management company, during which I hinted darkly at the appeal of uncollected, rotting trash for certain species of furry vermin, Earl and Madge returned, more dispirited than ever at the heaps of rubbish they had to pile into their sedan, but efficient in its removal. I remain hopeful, therefore, that their current absence will likewise prove to be temporary, but I dread what may happen in the meantime.

I got a most unwelcome glimpse of what an Earl-and-Madgeless future might look like on Saturday, which was a nice, sunny day of the kind we haven't seen in the Valley recently. Thrilled by this rare glimpse of sunshine, I raced into the utility room to retrieve my bicycle, which had only seen service twice this spring. As I swung the door open, I a thousand angry flies swarmed onto me like bees on a honeybear. Reader, I yelped. Then I lurched back, slammed the door, and made a quick scan of the immediate area to see if any stray flies had found their way into my apartment. It all looked clear.

Regrouping, I vowed that I wouldn't let a bunch of flies - no matter how numerous or demonic - deprive me of my bike ride. Sealing my lips and squinting by eyes, I swung back into the utility room, slammed the door, grabbed the bike, and swung back through the door as quickly as possible, trying to minimize the number of flies who would inevitably leak into The Submarine. I then went on a soul-soothing ride through Easthampton and took pictures of bears.




On my return, I found that at least two dozen flies had swept into my apartment with me and my bicycle, and I spent the rest of the weekend swatting flies like a maniac. No sooner would I track down one and squish it against the window than two more would begin buzzing in my light fixtures. A pleasant evening reading on the couch with Kate became a frenzied battle against a dozen buzzing flies along the entire length of the living room. I even briefly considered turning out all the lights and sitting quietly in the dark, just so I wouldn't have to hear them bumping and humming against the lamps.

I can now state with reasonable certainty that, as of this writing, the living room flies have been entirely annihilated. It hasn't been pretty, this war of extermination, and there have been times when I've done things of which I am not proud. But war is hell, my friends, and even the best among us cannot know how he will act until he finds himself right there, face-to-face with his own mortality, in the shape of two dozen tiny, crazed insects determined to nibble him to death, bite by excruciating bite.

With the return of clouds and gloomy weather today the fly problem appears to have eased. I've been able to take the trash out and do a load of laundry without inviting another swarm into my living room, but I know this is only a temporary respite. Until the cavalry arrives - in the form of two foul-tempered retirees in a maroon sedan - I will remain under siege - and I will be afraid, I will be very afraid.