Fly wrangling

I got home to find a lot of flies in my apartment. I'm not a bug squisher, so I wanted to eliminate the flies without handling them. Hoping they would kill themselves in my halogen torchiere was a bit too passive, and my cat had tired of chasing them around. So, of course, I went online.

I found a great discussion of home remedies for houseflies. I decided it was too late for the water-and-a-penny solution, so I went for the milk-vinegar-and-corn-oil solution. They warn that it shouldn't coagulate, and mine did. And the flies ignored it.

Then two thoughts occurred to me:

1. Take off the (faulty) window screens and let them fly free, and
2. Use that information you might have learned if you paid attention to that article about how flies anticipate being swatted. 

The result is my own, personal, patent pending new home remedy for houseflies:

1. Make sure there are no flies in your bedroom.
2. Put the cat in the bedroom and shut the door. (This is to make sure the cat doesn't follow a fly out of a window and to try to preserve any last bits of respect your cat may have for you.)
3. Open all your windows wide.
4. Pick a window with a fly on it and pop the screen out, being careful not to allow the screens to fall three stories to the ground.
5. If the fly(ies) decide not to fly out the window, use swatting knowledge to guide them there.
6. Repeat until you or the flies surrender.
7. Replace the screens, which will inevitably be on the western side of the room, enabling you to be blinded as you try to fit them into the frame.

So I spent about a half hour running around my apartment waving my arms trying to guide flies out windows. It's actually rather satisfying: they look so right and graceful and innocent zooming in an s-curve off into the open air. And you can think, "Ah, one less fly!" For me, at least.
Food for all those spiders I capture and put on the fire escape.