It’s the dead of winter, temperatures in the single digits. Yet every day I’m finding one or two flies in the house, some alive and some dead. Where could they be coming from. Certainly not from outside. It creeps me out that there are apparently maggots somewhere in the house.
Murdered your wife???
<snerk>
At the building I used to work in they’d fall out of the fluorescent light fixtures. In the middle of winter. They weren’t mature; they could only fly a couple feet, and then they’d crawl around.
I’ve always heard them called “cluster flies” and they’re a common occurance in New England winters. No idea of how they hatch in winter, presumably the warmer inside temps are a refuge for them, and they manage to breed in winter.
Several of my friends use a vacuum cleaner with a long wand attachment to suck them up. Kinda gruesome changing the bag.
Yum.
Got mice in the house? It’s quite possible that some critter has passed away in the walls, leading to a favorable place for the spawning of maggots. Of course, you’d still need the original progenitor fly, but it could have happened upon the body during a more temperate period a couple of weeks ago.
Not as far as I know.
WAG: They came from other flies.
I had year round flies in my house that constantly frustrated me in that I, too, kept wondering where the hell they come from (my house is on total climate control lock-down, and very clean).
One windy wintery day, I felt a draft and I tracked it down. One of my windows (which I presumed was always locked) was actually open at the top sliding half by about a quarter inch. With no storm window or screen, this was a constant opening to the outside.
So… double check all your windows and doors.
Or… listen carefully to see if you can hear a throaty, whispery demonic voice telling you to… GEEEETTTTTTT OOOOUUUUTTTT.
Was I the only one who thought this was going to be another question about the Sims?