An email from my brother, who lives in Washington Heights:
For the last two days, there has been a single housefly in my apartment. I haven’t tried to swat it, for no particular reason.
Yesterday, one of my fountain pens which I use for writing music had run out of ink, and I had to clean it out. I put the pieces of the pen into a small dish filled with water, and let the ink leak into the water. I changed the water a few times, and then flushed the pen with cleaning fluid, and re-flushed it with water and left the pieces to soak in the same dish with water.
I just found the fly lifeless, having drowned in the water dish.