I slew nine with one blow . . . .

I wish I had Puxx N Boots to help me deal with my

gnat problem.  He'd know what to do with them.

My kitchen and bathroom have been invaded by clouds of gnats, nasty, obnoxious, nitpicky little gnats.  They fuss around my face, they cluster on the ceiling, they swirl around the light fixtures.  They are, in a word, icky.

Fortunately, I have discovered spraying them with Fantastic kills them quite effectively, and I can get quite a few with one spritz.  Unfortunately, that means I sometimes go berserk, spraying the ceiling, the wall, the counters, everywhere with Fantastic, which lingers briefly in the air, and then drifts down into my hair and my eyes, if I don't close them quickly enough.  Anything that is left out when I spray has to get thoroughly washed and dried to remove the Fantastic film.  This is a nudge and a half, but the dead flecks that used to be annoyingly lively little gnats make it all worthwhile.  This is the first time I have felt a bloodlust.  Ordinarily, if I kill an insect I apologize and feel bad.  Unless one of the gnats seems to linger, I feel no remorse.  I have become a serial gnat killer.

Being able to kill several gnats with one burst puts me in mind of the beginning of the story of Puss in Boots, where he "slays" several flies with one blow, and adopts the motto "I slew nine with one blow," leading to the misunderstanding that he killed nine people.  (This was not in the original tale by Perrault, but in a variation in a storybook I had as a child.)

I just wish I could kill 900 with one spritz.  At 9 at a time, I'm going to have gnats flying around for a while.