Our new house has several swallow nests. I was adamant with the painters to NOT disturb their nests... Leave me some paint & I'll touch it up after the summer is over. They are so awesome to watch swooping around the yard in the evening. An adult swallow can...... *ahem*....swallow.....850 insects a day!!!
You almost gave yourself a solution. Start wiping your butt better (zero residue) after taking care of business on the throne, and the flies will not be incentivized to follow you around. You are a walking supply of readily available protein source for them.
I bathe after my throne time. My anus is squeaky clean. Clean enough to kiss... Besides... they seem more interested in my face & head. Maybe I'm a shitfaced shithead? Yep. I still hate the little bastages, though. The first coupla weeks I would bring my collections home & put in my own trash bin. That came to a screechin damn halt. Now it all goes into the commercial bin at the shop.
I wish I had taken a photo of what that little device looked like in two days worth of sitting outside my house. Thing was filled to the brim with dead flies. Must have been hundreds of them. $5.
Did you ever happen to walk past it downwind? Them things would gag a friggin maggot off a gutwagon. They'd make you want to stuff your nose into a skunk's ass just to block some of the stench. They're nastier than a Croatian PAWG's taint. Welcome back, man...
I actually sniffed it. It smelled of rotting roadkill, but it was so bad I wanted to keep smelling it... ... I have a habit of liking trash apparently
Which are worst.....Flies, Mosquito's, or Gnats!! ALL pain in the azzes!! IMO mosquito's are the most tolerable.
I got nailed by black flies when I was 7 or 8 up there, bites on every square inch of uncovered skin. Still remember it.
My grandfather used to tell me about when he was young in the early 1900's. One summer he lived with his grandmother in a sod house in S. Dakota. They didn't have screens on the windows and shook bedsheets to try to drive the flies out of the house. When I lived out there for a few years during college, I thought it was strange that you could actually swat the black flies with your hand out there. Where I grew up in WNY they were faster and there was no way you could get them with your hand.