Bluebottle ignores wide open door for third day
The annoying little twat has spent the last three days headbutting the same window
A bluebottle in a house in Pontypridd has ignored a wide open door for the third day running, choosing instead to repeatedly headbutt a closed window two feet away.
The fly, which entered the property on Thursday during the hottest part of the heatwave, was offered a clear and unobstructed exit when homeowner Glenys Turbotits propped the back door open with a bag of compost.
“The door’s been open since Thursday,” said Mrs Turbotits. “Wide open. You could drive a fricking tank through it. He’s not interested.”
The bluebottle has instead committed itself full-time to the kitchen window, which has remained closed throughout, striking the glass at a rate of roughly forty times a minute before resting briefly on a banana.
“He knows the window’s there,” said Mrs Turbotits. “He’s hit it about nine thousand times. At some point you’d think the information would go in.”
Experts say the behaviour is common during heatwaves, when bluebottles enter Welsh homes in large numbers and then dedicate the remainder of their lives to not leaving.
“The bluebottle is not a stupid animal,” said Dr Emlyn Buzzard-Pryce of the Welsh Institute of Flies. “It is an absolute tard of an animal. There’s a difference, and it’s important the public understands that.”
Dr Buzzard-Pryce confirmed that opening more doors and windows would not help, as the fly would simply treat each new exit as something to fly past on its way back to the closed one.
Mrs Turbotits says she has now accepted the situation and considers the bluebottle a member of the household.
“My husband’s the same,” she said. “Thirty years I’ve been telling him things. In one ear, straight into the kitchen window.”
At the time of going to press, the bluebottle had located the open door, flown directly through it, and come back in.
