House Guests

They weren't expected, but a swarm of fruit flies decided to pay us an extended visit. Apparently they have never heard Ben Franklin's axiom that "House guests and fish both stink after 3 days." The kids left the door open one evening, and a cloud of them moved in and spread out.

So what do you do about 500 fruit flies? You have the swatter of course, but they are so small, they fit through the holes as often as I could squish them. The vacuum is effective. We bought a new canister vacuum, so I felt a bit like an anti-aircraft gunner trying to knock them out of the sky. Fly strips had limited success in the short term, but work ok over a few days. Another slow but extremely effective strategy was to fill cups with apple cider vinegar and soap. The flies love it, but the soap doesn't love them. After a few days, there was a big pile of flies in the bottom.

Stef and I spent days fighting this unwanted visitors, but they kept coming back. Where are they coming from? Could they already be reproducing in the house. I remember from biology that they reproduce quickly. Apparently, it takes 2 weeks to hatch. Maybe they are in the wall? Maybe they are in the pond. We looked, thought, pondered. It only took 4 days to realize that maybe they were coming from the fallen fruit under the apple, peach, and pear trees in the side yard. Of all the strategies we tried to get rid of the flies, picking up the rotten fruit seems to have had the best effect.