If you’ve been outside at all in the last week in Sydney, you may have noticed a distinct change in your surroundings. A humming, threatening murmur in the distance, perhaps? An unwelcome tickle of pin prick feet on the back of your neck? That spine-tingling, gag-inducing bzzzz by your ear? That’s right, it’s fly season baby, like you have never seen it before.
The swathes of flies plaguing our sordid city has left us with many questions: has Sydney always been overrun with these little beasts? Why, now, has God abandoned us with his most irritating creatures? Is this what summers in this cursed land are going to look like now? Wait, it’s not even summer!
Read on, friends, for I may have some of the answers you seek.
TikTok has been truly plagued with videos upon videos of flies harassing, attacking, and straight-up violating the good people of Sydney, and it’s left a sour taste in my mouth (wait, maybe that was just the critter that flew into it).
This video, in particular, gives me hives in a way only a fly x trypophobia collab can. Which is exactly what this is. You have been warned.
If you’re wondering if this fly armageddon is normal for Sydney, the answer is no.
Turns out, like every other cursed swarm of critters this city has endured in recent years (snakes, mosquitos, mice, spiders, cockroaches, LOCUSTS… yeah, wow, we are NOT okay), the boom in these miniature devils can be attributed to the change in weather we’ve seen come El Niño and the IOD.
The two climate drivers have seen Australia’s east coast experience an unseasonably warm winter — meaning the cold that usually kills of these blasted creatures failed to do it’s one (1) job.
“It has been pretty mild over winter maybe some of these adult flies didn’t die off. So, they’ve stuck around for a lot longer, adding to the boom we’re seeing right now,” entomologist Bryan Lessard told 9 News.
Since the flies didn’t freeze to death, there were plenty around when the spring blossoms began to bloom — meaning the surviving flies had plenty of food to eat to keep them healthy and… breeding. Yuck.
“Flies – like us – like a cool beverage in spring and fortunately there’s a lot of the flowers in spring and they’re full of nectar which is high energy,” Lessard said.
Even more cursed, Lessard says that you aren’t imagining it: the flies are absolutely trying to square up with you on your walk.
“Biting flies like horse flies and mosquitos are actually attracted to the CO2 in our breath, so if you’re exercising a lot more the biting flies will be attracted to you,” he said.
Okay, NO. Absolutely not. I choose to extract myself from this narrative.
Before you insert yourself into a rocketship to be blasted to outer space, I do have one tidbit of good news for you: flies are actually really important pollinators, so the one good thing about having a lot of them is that it’ll contribute to flowers, fruit and veggies growing in gardens.
Though if every time I open my mouth to eat said veggies, a fly tries to dive in, I’m out.
