Fly Infestation

So, in part 1 I described how I came up with the main character of the story. In this post, I will describe how I came up with the idea for the pesky fly. A couple of years ago, my son started in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at UTHSC (The University of Tennessee Health Science Center). He lived in different places during his time there as a student and one time we were talking to him on the phone and he was complaining that he had an infestation of flies in his home. He said every night when he came home after classes and studying (that’s what he told me he was doing) there would be 20-30 flies in his house. Apparently his dog Aubrey wasn’t interested in catching flies, which was a bit of a surprise because Aubrey seems like she wants to catch anything that moves. I have to admit, that I was doubtful that he had that many flies to contend with, but we were going to be there to visit him in another week, so I told him we could try to figure things out together when I had a better grasp of the problem. When we arrived in Memphis and made it to Isaac’s house, I discovered that he was not exaggerating about the flies and his estimate was probably conservative.

How are they getting in?

My next goal was to figure out how the flies were getting in. I found a small hole in the corner kitchen window and it didn’t seem likely that they were getting in that way, but I had the window pane replaced just in case. Sure enough, the flies were still getting in—the infestation continued. I looked at other windows—no problems. I checked around all of the doors and I couldn’t find anywhere where the flies might be getting in. When working on another issue, I went to the storage shed where the access was outside, but it was connected to the house. When looking for what I needed, I noticed that there was a rather large hole (about 5” in diameter) in the house side of the storage closet. I examined the hole and discovered that I could see the back of the dryer, which was located in the system. I also noticed that there seemed to be quite a few flies in the storage shed. This seemed like a potential entry point for the flies, so I patched the wall to see if it helped. Sure enough, after patching the wall, the infestation dwindled. There was much dancing and jumping for joy at finding the solution to those pesky flies. Hmmm, pesky flies, maybe a book about a pesky fly would be fun to write and fun to read.

Yep, that’s where the idea for the pesky fly came from. I have my son and the hole in his house to thank for helping me come up with the idea for the book. Thanks, Isaac.