If Ghengis Khan had to kill a housefly, he'd do it just like DH.

[snigger]

We live in the country, it's summer, there are flies. A non-standard pest-eradication programme has commenced.

Stage 1 :

DH cremated the flies where they landed using a butane blowtorch. Stage 1 was abruptly, yet sadly for him, not abruptly enough, terminated when the bloodlust took him and he tried to wipe out a fly on the organza drapes in our bedroom. (3 1/2 inch hole, 30 min row, flowers for me, new curtains on order)

Stage 2 :

DH stands, fixated, right now, in the hall, with the Dyson, (I'm trying to think of a non-smutty way of saying 'pole extended', but there isn't) hoovering them up as they land, with a look of near religious mania on his face.

Anyone else care to share? Or am I married to the weirdest man in Britain?

Hahaha - I am having a SHIT day and that is the first thing to bring a smile to my face. Tells him thanks (and buy him a fly swat).

..and I've jusr snorted tea over my keyboard at the 'pole extended' comment.

Not as good, but all our bushes are terrified of DH, a.k.a. 'Killer of Plants'. We got some big shears, and rather than careful, considered cutting, DH goes into some kind of frenzy where all you see is flashing blades and green stuff flying about.

I have to supervise to make sure he doesn't accidentally cut down the washing line. When it's all over, he can barely lift his arms, and the bushes are mangled. After a week, it looks even worse as it becomes evident that he's damaged loads of branches while not entirely cutting them off.

We really need a gardener.

ooooooh get him one of those electric tennis racket thingies they are fab and so satisfying to use hee hee

We have one of these, DP looks pretty ridiculous when he is trying to kill flies using it. I must say, they do work though!

My brother has a similar approach to these matters - he found a wasp's nest in a bush and incinerated the entire bush with a blowtorch.

The second one he found was in a garage housing his beloved 1930's Morris truck, so he needed a less flammable solution.
He went to the other extreme & sprayed the nest with liquid nitrogen - apparently wasps arriving home froze as they flew and cracked in half.

He may have acquired his novel ideas on pest extinction from our grandfather, who used to cut wasps in half on the wing with a breadknife.

On the plus side, he is very good at thinking up ingenious solutions to all sorts of problems & could write a book entitled '101 uses of a wire coathanger'...

like this

the spider grabber also looks good let me know if he wants an apprentice, I've a couple of hours to spare!

roffle @ killing your curtains

We have children.

They know from experience to stay well clear, but these tennis racket gadgets, in the hand of a zealot - safe?

I don't want to party to any near-decapitations just because he hasn't honed his backhand.

ROLF at Yanks Edward Scissorhands in the garden.

On the theme of pests, YanknCock - what happened to the squirrel?

ah wow! I like the look of the fly catcher on that page too - it burps!

Rusty, we must ensure DH and your brother never learn of each others existence.

Liquid nitrogen. I'm in awe.

just remembered

my mums boyfriend goes on slug duty every monday evening. He stakes out the veggie pacth and decapitates the slimy intruders with his penknoife then leaves the bodies "to warn the others"

YanknCock Dh has sliced the washing line with a machete type tool on 3 occasions. He starts to trim the hedges and gets carried away. I am a but worried now as he has just ordered a new hedge trimmer - I think nothing will be safe

I'm afraid I'm the one responsible for the Killing Fields in our house. DH is frequently so zoned out in front of his laptop that armies of ants could carry him away and install him in their underground caverns before he would come to.

He did notice the day I Dyson'd up a wasp's nest, though - largely because of the increasing noise of threatening buzzing coming from the cylinder and my rapid, anguished calculations on the volume available vs the quantity of wasps I still had to exterminate.

I'm glad we were too skint to buy electric trimmers.

Now he wants this weed wand thing with a gas cannister on it. I have an extremely bad feeling about it. . .

Rusty, the squirrel gnawed its way back in, I think just to prove a point. This was after we spent over £300 getting all the nearby trees chopped down, so no idea how the little f*cker got up there. Then it got hotter, and it isn't squirrel nesting/mating season for a while, so s/he buggered off. I suspect it will reappear in September, so we need to get the fascia boards replaced. Even now, I am traumatised by the whole thing, still occasionally think I can hear the squirrel on the roof!

That made me laugh, snigger. I recommend that you give him the fly killing kit that someone actually managed to make dh's grandad pay actual money for - consisting of two wooden blocks.

Instructions:

Hold block 1 out flat in right hand.*

Hold block 2 in left hand.*

Wait until fly lands on block 1, then hit it with block 2.

Ta da.

• • lefthanded users may wish to substitute left hand for right and vice versa!

Lol, bless him!

I let my DP sort out the "intruders" when they arrive. In fact, I had the biggest spider I had ever seen last night in my flat. I rang my DP up and he came home after work (usually stays at his parents during the week) to come tackle it for me. Though he even admitted it was the biggest he had ever seen.

Although, I have this hilarious video of the two of us after we came home one night, and there was a gigantic moth, never seen one so big, in our hall. The video is almost 10 minutes long of us screaming, DP included, as it kept chasing us down the hallway as we were trying to get it out the window

YanknCock DH has the weed thingy - he wanders around the garden annihilating buttercups. When I wanted to use it he decided it was too dangerous for me (funny how the cooker isn't a danger) and said he was quite happy to use it for me.

My brother pursues them relentlessly with fly spray and destroys at least 1 cubic metre of the ozone layer per fly.

Luckily I have a very energetic cat who catches them and eats them so I just waft the flies over to the windowsill and she mops them up.

PantryBoy, I'd be ok with him having one if he would stick to annihilating buttercups...I fear for the fence, the garden furniture, the hedge, the washing.....

In the same theme, my dh is petrified of snakes. Truly phobic. We live in a very snake-y area, and as we've been in a drought for two years the snakes are getting very bold looking for water. A few weeks ago dh spied one on the path and decided that it must die. I don't know how a normal person kills a snake but I doubt they chase the snake around the garden trying to shoot it with a double-barrelled shotgun like he did! Never did get it, either.

Snigger - my dh has just asked if your dh is going to try to claim for the curtains on the house insurance?

Because of my hooting and giggling over this thread dh demanded an explanation. He says he's not the only crazy one and told me to tell you about his coworker.

DH works with the constable in our village. (honestly...we have villages in Texas) one of the deputies has a novel way of killing flies and cockroaches; he Tases them. Poor little nasty bugs, it got to be cruel and unusual punishment.

But the idea of a law officer chasing flies around the station with a taser is shaking, isn't it?

Stayingsunny - I don't dare clim on the insurance, I'm fairly certain DH is classed as an act of God.

Thankfully he's stopping one short of a Taser, but I showed him the bugbuster ad, he bought one in B&Q, and now he's patrolling the house like the devil's own tennis ace. The sizzling noise as fly hits bat seems to work for him.