I have been attacked by those black flies or horse flies that you run in to in the woods sometimes or sometimes around coastal areas. They can be absolutely tenacious!!! And they sting or bite.

You must be irresitable!

I have a friend in Florida who every year has to suffer for part of the season through what he terms yellow stinging flies but they are outside, not house flies.

Last night we were sitting on the porch and the same fly kept bothering my husband. Not me. A fly swatter took care of him. Some people seem like bug magnets. My one grand is a mosquito magnet.

I've had "horse flies" follow me for half a mile when I'm running. At one house, we had to use picks & shovels to dig out the side of a hill. Black flies converged on us. We had to wear protection on our heads, neck, legs & arms....or suffer bites. Digging the dirt seemed to un-earth them.

I did have a bee attack the other day. I was outside on the deck overlooking a rose of sharon tree and a bumble was buzzing around me and then it stopped so I assumed he flew away. I came inside, sat down and the next thing I know, he's on my neck buzzing angrily. So I run outside and chase him off my neck but he starts coming at me again, so I ran into the house and shut the screen door. Darn if that thing didn't keep bounding after me against the screen still trying to get at me! I've never had that happen before. Fortunately, I didn't get stung.

Annie, what you have described sounds like the opening scene for a post apocolyptic movie where the first thing that begns to happen is the the insects and birds start behaving strangely. The birds gather in swarms large enough to block out the sun and the bees sweep through the land covering the sides of buildings and killing the livestock in the fields and breaking the windows to get inside. Before you know it the whole world is quaking and mountains are exploding and the sun had disappeared leaving the world to die except for a few hold outs who have hunkered down inside of a glacier where they become Adam and Eve and give birth to a baby boy with future unknown.

Nicole, those flies will not let you go! They will persue you for a long ways and they bite! I have even encountered them at the beach here in teh mid Atlantic.

Horse flies do seem to be even more prolific this year than usual. We've had a warm summer this year in the Bay Area with steady slightly above average hotter days rather than sporadic heat waves with milder days. I don't remember the flies being this bad last summer. Common flies are always around but the horseflies are really noticeable this year as we went into late summer. The yellow jacket colonies are more prevalent on the trails this year also. Female horse flies are the biters. They need a blood meal for the protein in order to reproduce.

Mmmmm, maybe bees stake out their territory?

Oh, i just hate those big black buzzing flies. If I get one in the house it torments me! it doesnt bite but it buzzes around me and makes my skin crawl. I get great pleasure in squashing them flat but they are pretty fast. I learned the trick of squirting them with Windex or even plain water to weigh them down so they fly slow and then, whack!

You may be less 'tasty' than 'thirst quenching'. Insects are thirsty in this heat. I think the wasps are staking out my outdoor spigots; I have to be quick when watering my plants.

For the past couple of years, I have used my trusty battery operated electric fly swatter to dispatch a variety of undesirable or persisrent insects. While I escort most of them to outdoors (wasps, katydids, spiders), others such as house flies, pantry moths, european house spiders, I zap with my latest, best rendition of electric fly swatter. super powerful.

Embossed in the plastic handle: ”superhighvoltage bug zapper.” About $5 at my local

”Lots” store. I even bought an extra because these are hard to get off season.

They look like a tennis racket. Excellent for those errant pantry moths that fly in a ditsy evasive manner.

When I visit my brother in central Wisconsin each summer there are always large numbers of biting deer flies making lives miserable for everyone. They have discovered that the deer flies are attracted to the color blue. My brother came up with a brilliant idea to take advantage of this. He bought a few blue hard hats and sprayed them down with adhesive. We wear them when the deer flies are bothersome. They land on the hard hat and get stuck. After a few days they have to scrape the flies off the hat and add more adhesive.

I'm not sure if it would work with horse flies which are much bigger than deer flies but seem to bite equally hard.

Our camp is between dense woods and a cattle farm. Horse/deer flys were abundant until I came across a home made fly trap on the internet. All you need is a Mason jar, funnel, water and meat. Put a chunk of meat in the Mason jar and just barely cover with water. Then attach the funnel on top, leaving space between the bottom of the funnel and the water. The flys smell the rotten meat and climb down the funnel and can't get out. Place it outside in a spot that is protected from rain. We haven't been bit since we started using them. It only works marginally on house flys though.

Yes, I've been attacked by a fly. Most of the time it's a green fly and the buzzing drives me mad ! I detest green flies, because they not only drive you crazy with their buzzing, but they also carry and spread diseases. I hate flies in general, because all of them are are nasty and annoying.

Not a house fly, but deer flies, absolutely. They will bite the crap out of you.

I have been fighting off what I think are fungus gnats in my family room. It is odd, because I don't have any plants there now nor have had since mid May (I always do over the winter.) They might be fruit flies, also, but again, why that room? They aren't in the kitchen. Anyway, they seem to be constantly trying to fly up my nose, into my eyes, into my mouth. They seem to be attracted to my laptop screen - they will land on it - , and a dish of ice cream will attract one within just a couple of minutes. then it stays in my face. I can usually kill it when it lands but there is always another to take its place.

I don't understand gnats. Whenever I walk in the summer, they buzz around but they don't seem to land much or bite...they only seem to want to get in your eyes. What's with that? I not only use cutters, but I carry a hawk's feather with me that I found and wave it in front of my face while I walk....I guess I get some upper body exercise in with the lower body that way. One lady I see on the trail has a sheer fabric draped over her like a veil but it looks more like something out of a horror movie to keep the bugs off her face. One of those safari hats with netting may be next!

I have been driven off the beach by greenhead flies in new jersey. When the breeze comes off the land rather than the ocean, it blows the greenheads in. Their bites are so painful! The only way to protect yourself is to slather baby oil all over. I usually give up and leave.