The Languedoc Page - Articles by Helen Bevis

The buzz of summer life

Here’s another thing that you don’t find out about France until you live here. In the summer life takes on another dimension. I’m not talking about incoming visitors of the human kind, but rather, it’s the beasties.

It all started with the lizard in the loo. There I was minding, or rather doing, my own business when I noticed something flicker, then dart and then leap. Not the aftermath of an extra spicy pizza from the local van but a real live, horribly large, lizard. I did the only thing possible – ran for the sausage tongs. One deft scoop later and there was a furious big lizard writhing in my grasp. It wanted to eat me (clearly) and was starting with the tongs. This was a fight for survival, or at least my toes. My long lost ball throwing skills leap into action and the monster was lobbed over the hedge. Phew, one less piece of nature in the house.

I’m not very good with nature. I love climbing, camping and all those hearty outdoor things; just don’t let anything that has more than two legs and no carte bleu touch me. It’s even worse in the house, but at least here I feel like I have some right to be a mass murderer.

Next come the flies. Every summer the lotissement buzzes with flies by the score. It’s just horrible. In the fug of heat, flicking them away from the food becomes a sort of barometer. If you can still manage it at the end of the day, then it just hasn’t been hot enough.

We have two types – the determined buzzing blue bottles that are fat and easy to squash with the squatter. The next type is more cunning – they flit on air currents, hunt in groups and like the central air vortex of the living room. This year I’ve cracked and sought help of the industrial sticky kind. I had heard tales of the most beautiful houses in the area using those horrid stick-on floral insecticide patches to kill them off. This reassures me that the lotissement flies are in good company. So if it works for the rich, then perhaps it might work down at this end of the social scale. You must have seen these things, there are a gazillion types to choose from.

So, here was summer science project#1 – I bought a sticker for the window, an insecticide impregnated hanging thing (like the do-not-disturb signs in hotels) and one of those old-fashioned unfurling toffee-like sticky paper roles. Daughter#2 (just about walking) even stopped eating her giraffe to watch the anti-fly house décor develop. I suspect she enjoys watching the flies, but I refuse to justify them on educational grounds. I shall take her to the airport if she wants to learn about flight physics.

Back to the fly-death project. Two are pretty but only one works. Based on the highly accurate science of ‘sticking them all up and seeing what happens’ the flies just land on the edges of the hangers, avoid the floral patches but die in their hundreds on the horrid hanging roll. Where there is beauty, the flies don’t die. Give me ugly and no flies every time.

Then of course there’s the mosquitoes, hairy spiders, non-hairy spiders, the huge flying black beetles that bounce off doors and heads, the hornets and endless, oh endless supplies of ants. Happily none of these beasties are as dangerous as the other humans round here but I’m not allowed to swat them...