Living in the country, in the mountains and in a foreign country is all a learning experience for us. Having come from an English city existence, the Spanish wilderness is a constant wonderment.
But we take it all in, trying to show as little surprise or shock as we can, car eating mice excepted.
And so it should have been no major concern to me when I took big car in for a service earlier this week to find, hanging over the counter where you book cars in, 3 very large, clear, plastic bags full of water.
I pondered these for a few moments but really could not decide why these were there and so I had to find out. In my very best Spanish I asked: 'are these here to punish the people who couldn't pay their bills?'.
'No', laughed the lady behind the counter, 'they are for the flies!'
OK, got me on that one.
'How are they for the flies?' I continued.
'Well, it stops them coming into the office' was the response.
OK. The high level flying flies, maybe - but there was a gap of at least 3 feet between the bottom of the bags and the counter. Surely, any fly with half a mind would just fly lower.
So, I carried on. 'How do they stop the flies coming in?'
'Well, when they fly up to the bags, they see their reflection in the bag, but it's many times bigger so they think there are really big flies inside and so they stay out' she explained.
'Really?'
'Oh yes!'
So, I needn't have spent over €2,000 on all the flyscreens. €1 worth of plastic bags and a bottle of water would have sorted the problem - apparently.
Nice try, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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4 comments:
'are these here to punish the people who couldn't pay their bills?'. Gosh, Jacqui, your Spanish HAS come on in leaps & bounds, lol!!
Where we live there, owners put their discarded 5 litre water containers around their gardens as animals apparently are VERY unnerved at their much larger reflections, like you were told about the flies.
C has put a few 2 litre bottles with water in around our back garden as there were some cats or a cat fouling the gravel. It has stopped it happening whilst we live here BUT there were around a dozen piles when we arrived home this last trip to Spain, very odd!
Ha Ha Ha! That's AWESOME! I agree with you - I'd much rather trust the fly screens.
Maybe it's C that scares the cats off while you are there, hence the problem comes back when you are away.
It's a good excuse to keep coming back though, you have to keep clearing it up.
They do that here in Mexico also and surprisingly it seems to work.
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