flynally

So after yesterday's post, I went out and bought two of these:

The hardware store had the old fashioned fly paper, but these seemed to be a wee bit easier to use (ie I could stand the thing up on the kitchen counter rather than installing hooks and/or draping strips everywhere. And hey, look...little doors! Bugs go in, bugs don't come out.
Right?
Wrong.

Those little DoorwaysOfDoom?? They are fakes.


You peel off some protective backing paper to reveal a flat sticky box that just has the little doorways DRAWN ON. I mean, WTF is THAT all about??? Are the little pink squares supposed to make the thing look more lovely and artistic once the dead bugs are stuck to it??? Or did the manufacturer think that flies are attracted to hot pink Escher-esque art? I don't get it.

I mean, really! It's just a sticky tube of cardboard!
Straight out of the box, it looks like a baseball bat or something!

Which is about all it was good for.

Get this one. I took the strips off to reveal the stickiness, stood thing up on the counter, the flies came around to sniff it out, and not one single fly landed on it. NOT ONE. So in flash of brilliance, I stuck some attractively ripe banana peel on it (now we have Scented 3-D EscherArt). The flies became ever more interested, but still no landings.

I finally caught about a dozen flies.
I repeat: *I* caught a dozen flies.
Not the Escher contraption.
*ME*.
By swinging that cardboard bat around in a whirlwind of rage until the stupid flies stuck to it. I did that until I discovered that it was far more satisfying (and took far less effort) to just use it like a sticky flyswatter.
THWWWAK!!!

You have no idea how happy that sound now makes me.
Well, perhaps you do ;-)

I finally had to stop playing Terminator so I could head out to teach dance class. When returned to my fantastically infested home, I saw all of the wonderful comments and suggestions left here for me. It was close to midnight, and I decided that I was a too tired to go looking for tape to build jodi's trap. But I had no problem taking Denise and jana's idea to put dish soap and apple cider vinegar in a bowl and set it on the counter, so I did that and hit the sack.

In the morning....satisfaction.



I didn't realize until just now the irony behind the fact that my DishOfDeath to catch fruit flies is in the shape of an apple. HA!!!

I didn't catch all of them, but at least I got rid of enough to no longer feel like I am in the middle of a strafing mission. The only thing that's not working for me about the dish is the fact that 5 or 6 of them seem to just sit on the edge of the dish, unwilling to take the plunge (do ya' blame them?) And I can't take the CardboardStickyBat to them at that point because the bug juice will go flying everywhere.

But this is a definite improvement, and once again, you guys have come to my rescue. Yay blogland!!!