Can anyone else here do it? I am not sure if its something special or not. What I do is I slooooowly put my hand closer to the fly, which is then ready to fly away, but if you do it slow enought they won’t fly away. If you suddenly make a quick strike when you are 3 inches away, then they normally don’t make it.
BTW I have a huge problem with houseflies in my student residency. I don’t think its just me either. Do these flypaper thingies really work? a windowscreen isn’t really an option.
When I was younger I could easily swat them out of the air with the back of my hand. It was a kind of flick of the wrist and it was quite satisfying. I swatted a few bees and wasps this way. I’ve only ever been stung once and that was when I had my hands behind my head and wasn’t prepared.
But can you do it with chopsticks?
Are you serious? Of course. Another method is to bring your hands fairly close together, and then clap a bit above the fly. The fly sees the movement, launches into the air, right into your clapping hands.
When I was younger, one of the family pasttimes was sitting on the deck, swoop catching flies in your palm, and then bouncing them off the wooden deck and watching them buzz around in disoriented circles from being bounced off the deck. Good times, good times.
I’ve never been able to catch a fly out of the air, but my mom can. She’s also 79 and legally blind so that is one hell of a talent she’s got there. 
I used to make frog jokes (behind her back) and I’m still not convinced she wasn’t a frog in a previous lifetime.
I can catch big flies most of the time, I can also kill wasps with my hands which other people seem to think is really macho of me.
Yup, flypapres do work, as does fly spray. Or you could use the natural approach and get a fly-eating plant, we’ve got a Butterwort (Pinglucia) in our conservatory and that traps flies no problem(the Victorians used them in greenhouses before flypaper was invented). Or you could get something a little more exotic like a venus fly trap or any of these.
A fly will react to quick movements toward it. You can overload their senses by comming at it from 2 directions.
Never been very good at catching them but for some reason I can backhand the little buggers.
I nail 'em with rubber bands, from as far as fifteen feet away. Got probably a 60-70% kill rate. Can you tell I used to have a boring job in a fly (and rubber band) infested workspace?
Big deal! :dubious:
I can wrestle with my conscience–and win! 
It was a favourite past-time of mine when a kid.
Those long summer holidays had to be filled up doing something.
Strangely enough I seem to have lost the knack.
I think it’s a lack of patience.
My father taught me the technique the OP described.
My granfather would catch them out the air, wait until they flew past him reach out and grab them, let them go and repeat until bored.
Catching houseflies and/or killing them with your bare hands may be an itneresting diversion.
It is a hazardous to your health past time. Houseflies are nasty insects and carry all kinds of diseases.
Most obscene looking plant I’ve come across: http://www.easycarnivores.co.uk/nepenthes/index.html
Killing or catching them barehanded…meh. Big deal. The real fun starts when you rip just one wing off and set 'em free.
I haven’t caught them with my hands, or chopsticks, but I have with a pair of pliers. They weren’t flying at the time though.
Where I live now they’re pretty fast, but in the summer, inevitably a few get in the house and end up buzzing around the kitchen. When there’s five or six in there I grab a magazine or whatever throwaway coupon rag I got in the mail and roll it up tight. Then I go in the kitchen and try to whap them out of the air as they fly around. The breeze from my flailing gets them really riled up and they start flying around faster. It usually takes me about 10 minutes to kill them all. Sometimes they fall to the floor, stunned, and then after a couple of minutes they get up in the air again.
When I was in Israel for one summer, the flies were really slow and easy to catch. I used to grab them out of the air, shake my hand for a while and then toss them. They would buzz around in wild loops and circles as described by SlyFrog (what an apt username for this thread!) in post #4 before straightening up and flying right.
Years ago, when I used to smoke and smoking was still allowed in office buildings, I worked in an office right next to the entrance to the building. I had flies in my office all the time.
I used to catch them under a paper cup and use a straw to blow smoke into the cup until the fly got knocked out from the nicotine. Then I would attach a three-inch-long length of my hair to it’s ass with a small bit of superglue. On the other end of the hair, I would superglue a tiny tag made of tissue paper - half an inch long, about 3/16-inch wide. I’d write “Eat At Joe’s” or some other stupid slogan on it.
In a few minutes, the fly would come to and take off, dragging the tag along behind it like some tiny advertising biplane. I loved to release them in the office cafeteria. At one time, I had five flies buzzing around the cafeteria, towing signs advertising the catering service.
I quit smoking about 10 years ago. I don’t miss the yellow teeth or stinky clothes, but I kinda miss tagging flies.
Well I, for one, am impressed.
(A little queasy, perhaps, but very impressed.)
Many years ago, I mastered the art of sneaking up on a fly and flicking it with my finger, so that it shoots across the room and bounces off a wall. Ah, memories
I’ve never once considered taking up smoking… but I’ve never had an idea as awesome as this either.
You Swatting Fly style is strong, Fly Killer! But can you defeat Stomping Roach?