FISH FLIES AND CHIPS

Bird: What the heck are fish flies, dude?

Buffalo: You might know them as May Flies. They look like tiny little dragons, with wings. They have many aliases, but they all smell the same - like rotting fish. Every year they hatch by the millions in the lake, near the shore. They only live for about 24 hours - for a fish fly, life's a beach, and then you die.

Bird: So what's the problem?

Buffalo: The problem, Birdy, is that the fish flies that aren't eaten immediately by the fish make a beeline for our apartment complex. Attracted by the lights, you see... and they've got only one thing on their tiny little minds.

Bird: Rumpy pumpy?

Buffalo: You got it.

Bird: Having any success, are they?

Buffalo: About as much as I'm having, Birdy.

Bird: Oh, dear, doesn't look good for the propagation of the species, then.

Buffalo: You'd think so, but they return in hordes every June, so they must all be knocking off a piece when no one's looking. Meanwhile, there's dead fish fly carcasses piled two inches thick on the front porch.

Bird: Have you complained to the management, like?

Buffalo: No need, Birdy. The management elected to become "proactive" this year. They brought in thousands of Purple Martins to eat the fish flies.

Bird: Don't Purple Martins feed primarily on mosquitoes?

Buffalo: That they do, Birdy, but there's no shortage of mosquitoes here. They breed like shit in the swamp that lies between us and the lake.

Bird: Let me guess. The Purple Martins ate all the mosquitoes but wouldn't touch the fish flies.

Buffalo: Oh, no, the little bastards ate everything in sight, Birdy - mosquitoes, fish flies, lady bugs, grasshoppers, you name it. They stuffed themselves till they couldn't fly anymore. Dropped out of the trees in battalions and splatted like over-ripe figs on the freshly mowed meadow.

Bird: Gosh. And then they just lay there?

Buffalo: Oh, God, no - the management, in its infinite wisdom, sent a huge truck to the animal shelter and came back with every stray cat within a ten mile radius.

Bird: Yikes! And turned them loose on the gluttonous Purple Martins?

Buffalo: Aye. The carnage was mythic. The birds screeching like Banshees as they were devoured alive by hundreds of ravenous felines, many of them in estrus, and women and children fainting in coils on the sidewalks, traumatized for life.

Bird: Sacre bleu! And what has become of the cats, pray tell?

Buffalo: The damned things were so stuffed full of stuffed birds that they couldn't move. Their paws wouldn't reach the ground anymore, you see, so they just rolled back and forth, burping, belching, farting, and mewing a lot. Horrible racket. Of course this cacophony attracted the attention of the packs of roving feral dogs and raccoons from the neighboring woods.

Bird: Blimey!

Buffalo: It was like something out of a Sam Peckinpah movie, Birdy... hamburger all over the highway, so to speak. The rotting fish flies were bad enough, but decomposing cat entrails are something a man doesn't soon forget. The dogs and the raccoons had a real taste for blood now. Thank God they went first after the more obese tenants and their ugly young, much like hyenas attacking the stragglers in the herd, like. Otherwise, we'd all be dog meat by now. Then the management came up with the final solution, so to speak.

Bird: The mind boggles...

Buffalo: See, it turns out that dogs and raccoons can't stand the stench of fish flies, so...

Bird: Good God, man, they brought back the fish flies?

Buffalo: In great buggering droves. And now they're...

Bird: Don't tell me. Two inches thick on your front porch?

Buffalo: Right.

Bird: It's Homeric, Buff - like the worm Ourobourous eating its own tail, like.

Buffalo: Aye. Better go. Gotta wash the old octopus.

Bird: And the sick pussies are calling me.

Buffalo: Arf, arf!