It all started with a fruit fly infestation in my apartment this summer. Mind you, I’m untidy but not filthy. Fruit flies magically give birth to themselves once they smell food. And I didn’t immediately take out the melon rind and apparently became the queen of my own fruit fly colony.
The timing was especially unlucky because I was to leave to Lake Tahoe the very next day. I thought I had extinguished all larvae. Two weeks later I came back to a fly covered apartment as if I had forgotten a dead body.
It was useful that I learned how to golf in Lake Tahoe because these new hitting skills came in handy. In a three hour kill streak I murdered all flies. And for those I couldn’t reach on the ceiling I set up vinegar death traps. And here’s a tip for you, if you ever have a fly plague yourself:
Do not put the vinegar traps next to open windows. In fact close all windows. Because all the flies outside will be attracted to your little vinegar cocktail party.
Also, don’t leave food or trash around ever. In my fridge, I now have a unit for food, one for drinks and one for waste.
And lastly, do not leave empty bottles around. My fly tribe did not survive, as I had thought, on that one melon juice stain. Judged by an enormous fly graveyard next to the empty bottles, they had lived off molecular beer particles. Until all the alcohol was gone and many addicts dropped dead.
I’m happy I had a fruit fly infestation.
The day after my massacre I went to Kassel to attend the Sommerakademie für Komische Kunst. For one week, twenty cartoonists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland met, drew cartoons and drank beer under the guidance of German comic legend Gerhard Seyfried and the Caricatura Gallery. And my fruit flies functioned as my muse for ten artworks, cartoons and even paintings. I included some of them in this post. All of our works will now be shown live at Stadtmuseum Kassel opening September 14th.
And here, my dear blog readers, a gallery with photos both from the Summer School and Lake Tahoe (all Sommerakademie photos (c) Caricatura Kassel):