Tuesday, September 24, 2013

&%#@*! Fruit Flies

The infestation is upon us: a plague of fruit flies.  Well, at least it was upon us until yesterday.  Why is it that I forget things year to year?  We get fruit flies every late summer, and last year, my aunt Cindy showed me a way to get rid of them that actually works.  AND doesn’t require me to have a 2-liter pop bottle hanging around like all of the Pinterest fruit fly traps.  I can hardly believe it took me two weeks of cursing the little beasts before setting my trap.

 

You’re going to want to do this.  Find a clear, sturdy cup (for some reason, this didn’t work at all when I used a paper cup, but you can see that I have a plastic cup in the photos and it works just fine).  Clear is best because then you can watch the little buggers!  Or just a red Solo cup if you want, but then you run the risk of someone thinking it’s beer, and nobody wants to mistakenly drink fruit flies.  Has anyone else noticed how terrible they smell?  They taste worse, and I speak from experience: I find them floating in my wine glass almost every night.  ‘Round here, we use coasters on top of our glasses.

 

All right.  You have a cup.  Now, cut yourself a piece of delicious fruit to put in the cup.  I prefer peach or nectarine pits with some flesh still on them.  After your fruit is in the cup, cover the cup with some plastic wrap and then put a rubber band around the rim of the cup to keep the plastic wrap taut.  Find a paperclip (often the hardest part, in this house), unbend it, and poke some holes in that plastic wrap.  Set the whole thing out by your fruit dish or wherever fruit flies colonize in your house and watch them get trapped inside the cup!  They can crawl in, but they can’t climb out.  Throw the whole thing away after you’ve rid your fruit dish of the infestation.

 

photo (4)

Isn’t that gross?

 

 

photo (5)

 

Begone, foul beasts!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I use a small quantity of apple cider vinegar with a couple of drops of dish detergent. It works well and you just pour it down the drain.

Leland said...

I use a human thumb with real flesh still on it.

Amelia said...

Mom, that has never worked for me. Leland, you'll run out of thumbs after two summers.

Leland said...

Why do you assume I use my thumbs? I don't.