Not quite loving ALL nature...

I quite often describe myself as a 'nature nerd'. I have in the past claimed to love all nature and embraced all manner of not-so-cute-and-cuddly creatures including eels, giant weta and tuatara.  It's time to confess. I really don't love all creatures great and small. In fact, it's some of the small ones that drive me the craziest.

Flies. I am really annoyed by flies. All kinds of flies, the little, moronic ones that just zzzzz around in circles in the middle of the room, the flies that have some kind of mad penchant for anything electrical, so they repeatedly land on my laptop or the corner of the television.  No matter how many times I shoo them away, they just fly in a lazy figure eight, and return to their favourite spot.  Which they then throw up on. Those 'fly spots' that you see on your walls, roof and lightbulbs, are not poo, they are in fact where the fly has regurgitated some spit in order to liquefy more solid food items, which it then mops up with its tongue, like a sponge. Blegh.

The problem with flies is if you don't like them, how do you get rid of them? you can swat them, but that's energetically demanding (I'm nothing if not consistently lazy!). Swatting also leaves gross fly remains on your walls, coffee tables etc. Some genius inventor has come up with an electric fly swat, that looks like a cross between a tazer and a tennis racket.  You can spray them, but it's not nice to pack your house full of chemicals, because you're annoyed at a couple of flies dithering around the lounge.  My Nana always had some of that sticky paper hanging in the kitchen... which I found rather macabre, with it's trail of sticky black corpses, trapped forever in glue. 

I have another solution. A venus fly trap. I've got one on our kitchen windowsill, and lo and behold it has been doing it's job.

Two in one go!

 Venus fly traps, are carnivorous plants. That in itself is pretty cool. They work by the tiny hairs found on the inside of the 'trap' part. When an insect walks over these trigger-hairs, the leaves swing shut, trapping the insect inside. The insect struggles away, the leaves seal around it, creating a kind of 'stomach' where digestion occurs, and then after the juice has all been sucked out, they open again, with just the exoskeleton of the insect remaining. amazing! 

I hope my venus fly-trap doesn't get as big as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors!

So, what nature do YOU not like? got any pet peeves, or animals that just gross you out? Why?