Vacuum Control

The targets didn’t stand a chance.

I had carefully planned my route, staying stealthy, low down, hidden. Reconnoitered the target area, dialed in the killing zone, became one with my prey.

I was stalking.

My mission: eliminate the hordes of annoying fruit flies that had invaded our kitchen.

I was heavily armed. My weapon of choice is a pistol-grip, 1” caliber, built-in vacuum cleaner with a 3 inch barrel and cloth tube covering the hose to prevent damage to the baseboards.

It is a high-tech insect killing machine.

I am…The Fly Sniper.

For some missions I utilize a silencer – a couple of tubes for use with the carpet and drape attachments. These add-ons help to lessen the mental blow that dealing death brings into a sniper’s psyche.

Not that I need a shrink to help me understand what I’m doing. No need to ‘get in touch with my feelings’ here – I’m a known killer and I like it.

The enemy critters seemed to be congregating on the wall above the garbage can – no doubt licking their disgusting little fly lips, moaning and loosening their belts after a particularly satisfying meal of banana peel or discarded salad.

They erupt into flight at my approach, but my death-dealing weapon was upon them! Ha ha! Come within an inch or so of the business end of this Roving Vortex Tube of Destruction and in you go buddy! Not a chance of escape!

So there I was, lunging about the kitchen, sucking flies into the hose, trying to avoid bashing the cupboards too much, hoping the scrape marks on the walls would come off easily. The battle raged as I, surrounded, claimed victory after victory over my foe.

I narrowly avoided a tragedy when the nozzle came a little close to my wife’s chest area. By accident. Honest.

Over the fruit bowl I slowly circled my Wand of Death. In went the juice-sucking vermin as they rose to do battle. An over-ripe small plum also rose, unintentionally, thus turning our domestic dry vac into a wet one with a strangely satisfying “Glurp!” sound.

Fighter Command began seeing flies everywhere as I circled the kitchen, re-directing me to different areas of concentration. Nothing was safe – big game flies, fruit flies, those little jiggers you can barely see, all went into the Hose of Doom.

Flies on the ceiling could not escape, nor could the plaster that rained gently down as I bashed my way into fly-eliminating record books.

Seeing the demonic look in my eyes, the children and dog wisely scurried out of range. My wife was not so lucky and bears a perfectly round hicky upon her hip. The swelling from where she smacked me in retaliation should go down in a day or two.

Putting all exposed food into sealed containers, my wife denied my offer to drill holes in them so as to better facilitate fly-sucking at a later date. There goes that weekend of entertainment.

You know, there are some who decry the use of domestic cleaning equipment for murderous purposes. They say vacuums were meant for cleaning and not hunting. They call me a mass murderer.

To them I say – vacuums don’t kill insects. All the filth in the canister they bash into at two hundred miles an hour kills insects.

All this talk of establishing a Vacuum Registry in this country is a waste of time. There are too many unregistered built-ins, not to mention portables, for a registry to make any difference.

If they want to register my weapon, they’ll have to pry the plastic nozzle with the convenient on/off thumb switch from my cold, dead hands.