family

family

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

fruit flies

We recently had an invasion of fruit flies. We weren't sure where it came from, since I had been buying bunches of produce all summer. As it turned out, there were some forgotten potatoes rotting in our pantry (yuck!).

Any idea how to get rid of the little pests? We have some brilliant ones:
1. Suck them up in a vacuum (thanks, Scott)
2. Set out traps for them and wait for them to die (did you know they'll crawl in the small holes you poke in plastic wrap but won't crawl out?)
3. Brian's personal favorite: light them on fire

They can't go very far once you singe their wings. Believe us, we know.

It's much better if you can just kill them right off though. Brian was trying to figure out how to get the flame close to them without them realizing what was happening (as it turns out, they can sense rapid movement). Several weeks ago, I had bought some bug spray and we never ended up using it. Brian put it to good use, effectively creating a flame-thrower. Sure, the cabinets and floor were a little sticky afterward, but those little guys had no idea what hit 'em.

P.S. Don't try this at home.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder if you could be more effective in your spraying if you could track/predict the flight of a fruit fly using a MatLAB program.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Scott has a special bug vac that electrocutes them...it is better than a regular vacuum.

    ReplyDelete