Methods Of Prevention Of Increased Breeding Pointed Out – All Open Receptacles Should Be Covered
From the 1938 centennial edition of The Times-Register
Flies will be flies, and here they are arriving in squads, daily, to again pay their “re-specks” to us in this spring of 1938.
That is, we must acknowledge an anwanted courtesy, and right here we find it necessary to reverse the Golden Rule and return evil for what, no doubt, the despised fly would term, good.
Man considers the fly to be his worst enemy – worse than typhoid, or malaria, or dysentary, or any of the other filthborn diseases, for he is a carrier of all of these; so the edict goes out – kill him, that means swat him, electrocute him – poison him, drown him – any way at all will do so that he’s banished from human habitation.
Start Fight Now
The best thing is to start right now to wage the fight, by eliminating all breeding places about the house; and to protect the house from invasion by such insects as may breed around the barn lot, by seeing that all windows and doors are properly screened, Screened porches shut them out of the vestibule to the home, thus giving added protection. Don’t wait until the summer heat to begin the foray, for then he will breed and increase in such numbers that swating will but mean a futile effort.
Covered garbage pails, spraying manure piles and keeping the manure pit covered and the pig pen at a considerable distance from the house will go a long way toward control. It is too much to expect complete extermination; but it is comforting to know that scientists have ascertained that the flight from the breeding place is within a limited territory, claiming that observation points to the fact that a radius of 300 yards from the greatest infestation, covers the hunting ground of the foraging fly.
120 To Generation
The progeny of a pair of flies runs into figures so great that it is difficult to comprehend them. Research along this line, claims to have discovered that during the summer, a new generation of flies may be expected every ten days, averaging 120 insects to a generation. While the life of a fly is generally believed to be a very short one, barring the accident of the spray pump, the swatter the spider web, etc., flies have been known to live many months.
There are several different kinds of flies – all of them equally to be shunned, but quite different in their make-up and life history. Probably the most common, is the house fly. This is a non-biting, 6-legged insect with black stripes down its back and sharp elbows in one of the veins of the wing. From the barn comes the stable fly. This is a blood-sucking insect that can bite – and does it! Harboring disease germs, which it usually does, it can directly inoculate the person of animal bitten by it. This stable fly is gray in color and somewhat more plump than the house fly.
Then there are blue bottle flies, black blowflies and green bottle flies that will find their way into the kitchen of the storage cellar of given any possible chance to do so. These flies have an especial liking for meats, fruits and butter.
About the first flies to appear at this season are the cluster flies. These are slightly larger than the house fly and have a fuzzy covering of fine yellow hairs. There is also a “lesser house fly” which makes its arrival early in the season. It is paler in color and has a more pointed body.
Flies, having a keen sense of smell are invariably attracted to a house, where it immediately attacks any unprotected food. As soon as the tempting odor of boiled cabbage is wafted on the air, the alert and ever ready fly makes his way to the kitchen.
Between its forays, its legs and hairy body surface has collected innumerable germs from the garbage heaps and other places of filth disposal. Not only does it carry with it, dirt of all kinds, but innumerable eggs, which deposited on food, and then consumed are carried within the body.
There is laboratory proof that more than 30 different disease organisms and parasitic worms can be carried by these insects, and then some. Frequently it has been shown that where epidemics have waged in the summer months, flies have there been breeding and fasting lavishly.
Disease prevention and disease control is far better than to await the epidemic and then attempt a cure.
A clean community means cleaner homes; and certain it is we cannot have clean communities without the cooperation of every home in the community.
So, at this house-renovating and general clean-up season, it behooves every housekeeper, every dairyman and every canner, to be mindful of the army of flies steadily and surely advancing unless the vanguard is checked, and his expectancy of a fat living is discouraged.
– Prepared by Lingjie Gu
