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“Norm—how many are there!” I yelled, afraid to open my mouth for fear they’d simply swarm in and start buzzing around inside my tummy!

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “I have a big family, but then that’s flies for you—we love our crazy, big fly families.”

I glanced over and saw that Harriet was eyeing me furiously.“Flies breed like… flies, Max, didn’t you know? There are probably millions! And now they’ll all come and live with us. In our house! Eating our food! And… defecating all over the place!”

Oh, dear. I’d really gone and done it this time, hadn’t I?

“It’s all right, Max,” said Dooley, though it was hard to make out his features through the haze of flies. “You did it out of kindness, and the universe rewards acts of kindness.”

Our humans were frantically clearing the table and escaping inside, and Harriet and Brutus were escaping in the direction of the bushes at the bottom of the garden, and soon it was just me and Dooley and Norm and his million-strong family.

“Ma!” Norm yelled. “Come over here and meet Max!”

A very large fly materialized out of the swarm and greeted me warmly.“Thanks for being such a good friend to my Norm, Max. He’s a good boy, my Norm is. A little rambunctious, maybe, but he’s got his heart in the right place. Now could you please tell him to find himself a nice girl and settle down—maybe he’ll listen to you. He certainly doesn’t listen tome, the little rascal!” And she proceeded to give her son a stern look. At least I think she did. It’s kinda hard to read a fly’s facial expressions, if you know what I mean.

“Oh, Mom. There’s plenty of time for that sort of thing!” Norm said laughingly.

And as Dooley and I watched on, Norm’s family attacked the food our humans had left on the table. I think it’s safe to say this was not my finest hour, but at least, as Dooley had suggested, the universe would probably reward me for my kindness, right?

“Maybe we can ask Solange’s sister to hypnotize them,” said Dooley after a while. “Make them forget we exist, you know. She seems to be really good at that sort of thing.”

I watched as Marge’s nice white table cloth quickly turned a muddy brown.

And then we decided to flee the scene, too. So we hopped down from the swing and hurried inside through the pet flap. But who was I kidding? Flies are hard to keep out, and soon they were following us inside, buzzing around everywhere we looked.

Our humans were all seated around the kitchen table, and giving me hard looks.

“Max,” said Gran suddenly. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

“Um…” I said, prevaricating mightily. But Gran’s stare is something else, so quickly I hung my head. “Yeah, it is,” I admitted. “I told Norm he could bring his family over—and he has.”

“Oh, dear,” said Marge, watching as her clean kitchen window was now speckled with hundreds of tiny dark spots.

But then Gran and Scarlett shared a look, and suddenly Gran brought out a stun gun, and Scarlett what looked like a can of mace. They both got up, and Gran bellowed,“Flies! You have ten seconds to leave this house or we’ll zap you straight back to where you came from! We are the neighborhood watch, and we are not kidding around!”

Norm came buzzing up to me, looking a little nervous.“What’s going on?” he asked.

“New assignment, Norm,” I said, darting an anxious look at Gran and Scarlett, who were now counting down from ten to one. “Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to head on over to the other side of town, and… and…”

“See what Bella and Leo are up to,” Dooley added.

“Yeah,” I said, giving Dooley a grateful smile. “And better take your family with you.”

“My entire family?!” Norm said excitedly.

“Of course. If they’re cut from the same cloth as you are, they’ll prove invaluable to the service. Wonderful spies, one and all.”

“Oh, Max—that’s so generous of you! So what’s the file on Bella and Leo?”

“Um… well, we’ve received credible intel that they might be foreign agents.”

“We’re on it, sir!” said Norm, and before Gran’s countdown had ended, he and the rest of his family had all buzzed off.

“See!” Gran cried as she watched the swarm of flies all disappear. “The watch rules!”

We decided to let her enjoy her moment of triumph. After all, she had saved this family from certain doom, not to mention several family members of eternal memory loss. The watch might not be the success story Gran had envisioned when she started it, but it wasn’t a total failure either.

“What are you going to do when Norm returns from his ‘mission?’” asked Odelia as she gave us a cuddle. Contrary to her grandmother, she knew who’d saved the day.

“We’ll just give him another one,” I said with a smile.