December 17, 2003

I have a fruit fly infestation in my kitchen.

I don't know where they came from originally. Probably an overripe piece of produce from the Farmers Market. They first appeared a few weeks ago. At that point, their numbers were small enough that I could decimate them just by clapping them between the palms of my hands or squooshing them against a wall or counter with a fingertip whenever they appeared. After a couple of days they seemed completely gone.

A week or so passed, and then they came back, and again, I was able to eradicate them with the squooshing and slapping method. But now they are back for a third time, and this time, there are a lot more of them. I first noticed their return when I found a fly sitting on the screen of my computer monitor. I should have known then that something was up--in the past, the flies had been content to inhabit the kitchen. They seemed to have two favorite spots: the lid of a bottle of honey and the neck of a bottle of balsamic vinegar. There seemed to be a approximately even distribution of flies on both these surfaces, casting doubt upon the old adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Anyway, there are more of them this time. Flies on the

(Ah, shit. I should know by now not to try and write and do something else at the same time. I just left my overly fussy cookies in the oven for 5 minutes too long. Oh well. I've never made this recipe before, so I don't know how they're supposed to be, and they're supposedly "soft" cookies, so maybe they'll just seem like normal cookies.)

Anyway, this morning, I woke up to flies on the dish-drying rack and the paper towel dispenser, hanging out on the walls and, of course, perched on the honey and the vinegar.

(Just tasted a cookie, and am happy to report that despite overbaking, they are extremely edible)

These flies were more than just a nuisance, they were unveiling my latent insecurities about my prowess as a housekeeper. Or at least my diligence as a housekeeper. My apartment is mostly pretty clean, I think. I vacuum, I dust, I spray things down with antibacterial cleansers. I've never had a bug problem before. In fact, I think the flies were what motivated me one Wednesday night two weeks ago to thoroughly clean my apartment--behind the furniture, under the TV (how does dust get under the TV, anyway?), taking ALL the books off my bookshelf and cleaning them and the shelves...and still the flies had come back.

Anyway, it was obvious that stronger measures were necessary, so of course, I turned to the Internet, where I found this page. And I actually disregarded most of the information on the page, although I did throw out a middle-aged potato I'd had sitting on the counter. But there was one absolute gem at the bottom of the page! A fly trap that could be constructed from ordinary household objects! I began construction immediately.

The basic idea of the trap is that you make a paper funnel, stick the funnel in a jar and then bait the jar with a little bit of cider vinegar. Flies crawl down the funnel in search of the vinegar (note that this is yet more evidence for the efficacy of catching flies with vinegar) and then they can't figure out how to get back out again. Within an hour or so of construction, I'd caught 7 flies!

This is probably evidence that I am a terribly sick person, but I had a great time watching the flies wander helplessly, looking for an exit to the jar. It was so much better than using pesticide--I got to have the satisfaction of not just killing the flies, but outwitting them. And please don't spoil my fun by pointing out that it is not very hard to outwit a fly or that I did not even design the trap myself.

The only bad thing about the trap is that it doesn't actually kill the flies. I managed to do away with the first round of flies by smushing them between the paper funnel and the jar. Then I made a new funnel and am currently collecting a new cohort. That website says that you can release them outdoors, but yeah, right!

(After I took this picture, all those flies on the outside entered the trap. Ha!)

Maybe my next project should be to make a honey-baited trap and settle the question once and for all.