Fly-killing

In the past month, my apartment has somehow developed a house fly problem. I am not sure where they came from, or how they multiplied, but every day upon coming home from work, 5-10 buzzing flies would greet me in the living room and bedroom. After killing those with a trusty fly-swatter, others would later make an appearance to annoy the heck out of me.

This past week, it definitely got out of control and Kelvin took it upon himself to do something about it. We did some online research through google, or the most comprehensive of research sites, and learned that many other individuals struggled with the same pesky problem.

We read the words of other sympathetic fly-haters whose remedies for either controlling, deterring, or killing flies, included the following:

- Dispose regularly of your trash (in case maggots are hiding in there)- DUH

- Use homemade flypaper: cut a brown paper bag into inch-wide strips; poke a hole in each strip and thread sting through the whole. Soak strips in a mixture of a ½ cup of sweet maple syrup, two tablespoons of brown sugar, and two tablespoons of white sugar for about eight hours. Remove the strips from the mixture, and after they stop dripping, hang them in areas where flies are a problem.

- Apply a mixture of cayenne pepper in a spray water bottle to spray flies and windowsills

- Use a spray water bottle with 1-2 caps of liquid dish soap mixed in

- Hang ziploc baggies with water and pennies outside or between the outside and your inner door (which apparently deter flies because they can see their reflections or because the contraptions resemble spider webs, which flies want to avoid)- doing this sans pennies can also work, apparently

- (For outside flies, and IF you have a garage): "Take a standard pickle or mason glass jar. Fill it 2/3 with water and throw a piece of chicken in it. Poke a hole in the lid a little larger than a pencil. Nothing will happen until the meat rots. Then on hot days (plentiful in Sac!), hundreds of flies a day will climb into the trap and be killed and or drowned. "

For fruit-flies, which have been a problem for me in the past (?due to my fondness for ripe fruit?) but not recently, a very harsh solution posted by one reader included the following "oven trap":

1. Open the door of your oven and place a piece of fruit (banana or kiwi peels) in there overnight.

2. Wake up early the next morning and quietly close the oven door.
3. Turn on the oven to 400ºF/200ºC for about 10-15 minutes and majority of your fruit flies will be gone.
4. Clean the oven thoroughly (I would hope so!!)

Another fruit-fly solution:
Mix 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup of white vinegar, 4 drops of Dawn soap in a jar; poke small holes in the lid, and leave where needed.

Kelvin figured out that my windowsills seemed to be the breeding grounds and thus, in addition to maniacally swatting flies for about 1 hour (he killed at least 30 today with a very evil-sounding laugh!), we decided to go pesticide-style, and sprayed all the windowsills with RAID.




Although we have caught one or two stragglers, I think the flies are gone. It is quite peaceful without all of that buzzing. And, if they come back, we know some ways to make their return a limited trip.