Free Waiting Out Winter by Kelli Owen Page B

stared at the strainer and dared it to grow wings and bristly whiskers and a sharp scissor-like mouth to infect him. The sink drain answered him with lightly echoing buzzing.
    The pipes? Was the fly somewhere in the pipes, and the lack of electronics humming in his house made it so quiet he could hear it through the metal pathways traversing behind walls and under floors? Nick peered down into the drain, swatter held near his head for quick intervention.
    He immediately sprang back to an upright position. Disbelief swam across his face and he looked back down to the drain, the hand holding the swatter hung at his side. The latticed plastic and wire weapon forgotten.
    When he looked up again he laughed. Out loud. Without reservation.
    He laughed so hard the sound reverberated throughout the house and he knew he’d awakened the rest of the house by the faint swish of opening doors and confused morning voices.
    There in the sink below him, the fly--the little black bringer of fear and destructor of society--had been trapped by the tiniest spider Nick had ever seen spin a web. Unused for so long, the drainer had become the perfect place for a web, and whatever tiny bit of moisture may have been on the metal of the sink, was the perfect lure.
    Death had been caught, for the moment.
    “What’s going on?” Jamie stared at him as Nick held his stomach. It didn’t matter if the peal of laughter had been genuine humor or just an uncomfortable relief, it had been a long time since he’d laughed like that and his muscled ached as if he’d just run a 5k marathon with a hangover.
    He met her eyes briefly before he tossed the unused flyswatter at Jerry. Was Mother Nature taking over? Were there enough spiders? Nick smiled at them both, grabbed the box of supplies off the counter, and headed toward the door to load it into the SUV.
    “Winter’s done. It’s time to go.”
    THE END

Author Note: This story was spurned by the fact that the DNR did indeed attempt to kill off the tent worm invasion a few years ago by releasing an obscene amount of black flies. Just like the story, they released them a touch too late and rather than fixing the problem, they added to it. While there were no deaths in Northern Wisconsin from biting flies, there was an awful lot of itching, complaining and even cancelled vacations because people couldn’t keep them at bay with even the strongest of bug repellants. It’s the only year I remember actually looked forward to winter, knowing the flies would finally be gone.