Fruit Fly MANIA!!

Hello again! Since we last spoke, my family and I have taken a little trip to Disney World! Oh, and one other thing. You know that little old post I wrote about fruit flies? Well, it has now gotten more than 500,000 shares on Facebook.

500,000.

What this means is that I’ve had nearly a million pageviews on this blog over the last week. And THAT means that I have gotten to read hundreds of comments and e-mails from people around the world. ABOUT FRUIT FLIES. It has been… What word am I looking for here?

It has been illuminating.

I’ve discovered, for example, that it’s a VERY GOOD THING that the post on this blog that went viral was about killing fruit flies, because it turns out that the vast majority of people seeking advice on fruit flies really aren’t all that interested in my personal life. When a million new people visit your blog, inevitably a percentage of them are simply looking for SOMETHING, ANYTHING to criticize, and what the vast majority of them settled upon, thankfully, was my fruit fly killing method. Which… well, I really don’t think there’s anything you could say about my fruit fly-killing method that could possibly offend me or make me cry. Sorry. But… A for effort, y’all.

Most people just wanted to share their own way of killing fruit flies, and tell me why their way was better than mine. There was a surprising number of people who were noticeably miffed by the fact that I’d been told apple cider vinegar was the ONLY vinegar that would work. This simple statement of mine launched something I have come to think of as Game of Vinegars, which is kind of like Game of Thrones, with the Starks replaced by apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar representing the Lannisters and white vinegar as Daenaerys Targaryen (I totally had to look that up).  Malt vinegar and rice wine vinegar are also involved– consider them those Lords whose names you can never remember. Anyway, people were all duking it out in the comments (and let’s not even mention the dish soap vs. non dish soap factions), hundreds of thousands of innocent fruit flies were killed in the process, and I was left wondering when someone was going to bring out the dragons.

Then there were those who shared totally alternative methods. Like these:

“A blast of Cold air will do the job open the front,back doors and let the house air out for 20-30 minutes,the little bastards can’t handle Cold kills’em off.”

Um, where exactly do you live, sir? BECA– USE THERE IS NO COLD AIR TO BE HAD IN TENNESSEE.

And then there was this idea!

“I like to leave a banana peel in the oven, leave the door open a little bit so they can get in. After a few hours I slam the door shut and roast the little bastards.”

And this one!

“Slice some apples. Open microwave and put apples in leaving door open. Wait for annoying a$$ flies to enter microwave and turn that f!*#er on. Bye bye flies.”

I think fruit flies may be the LEAST of these people’s worrie!

And then there were those who won the prize for most elaborate fruit fly trap:

“We had a major problem with them last summer. I took 2 Gatorade bottle them filled half way with a mixture of balsamic vinegar and fruit punch, threw in some banana slices and strawberry preserves, and rolled coated paper plates into a funnels with a very small hole on the end and put it in the top of the bottles leaving the hole just above the liquid. I checked the traps daily and would stir them around to knock the flies of the plate into the liquid. Within a few days they were under control and within a week they were all gone.”

Wow. That sounds REALLY EASY. Thanks for sharing!

Then there were the confessionals. A few of my favorites:

“I live in an older apartment in the south. I have no problems with roaches until people upstairs moved out. I guess their roach friends decided to move down with me.. I have bought every bug spray on the market. I think the roaches think it must be a shower because they come with towel and scrub brush. Until one day I was using GOO GONE. I sprayed that bug and darn if it didn’t turn belly up kicking. I use it on them all the time now. It smells good too. Make sure you clean up surface you sprayed.”

“I accidentally left the tray I heated fried chicken on out while I was gone over the weekend once, and found 50+ dead fruit flies drowned in it when I got back.”

“As a fat man, I would never allow a fruit fly to ruin my meal.”

“I like fruit flies, after ranching for college, I grew quite fond of them and would keep a banana rotting behind the sink in the winter to keep them alive. They’re my little puppies. with their beautiful bright red eyes. They don’t actually eat fruit. They eat the fungus that grows on fruit. That is why smells of spoilage (like wine, beer, vinegar) attract them. Unfortunately, when they walk through the fungus, it gets on their feet, so walking on clean fruit contaminates it, and leads to more rapid spoilage. The flies them selves are quire edible… :-)”

Thanks for sharing, y’all!

Some who found their way to my page were just plain confused:

“I WISH YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME THIS LAST WEEKEND WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER. THEY AREN’T AS BAD NOW BUT THEY MAY BE HIDING. HAVE TO BUY SOME APPLE CIDER.”

“Thanks for sharing a great tip, Lorna. Nothing is more frustrating than having them buzz around your face… Looking forward to spreading the DEATH.”

Others were neurotic:

“There is something that is getting overlooked in this post. You need to wipe down the entire area, wash fruit baskets. I tend to take a pillowcase and wrap my whole bowl, twist and tuck the end under the bowl. If you have cooking juices,anything sweet or spilled or glasses or cups sitting around, they are breeding grounds for these crazy fruit flies, no matter how many traps you set, you gotta clean thoroughly. I also found my compost bin way way too close to my porch doorway, they had easy access until I moved it to the corner of the property. Cut them in 1/2 within days. Also patch screen or check windows, they zip in some small little areas.”

Yeah. WILL DO.

And I have received many, MANY, FAR TOO MANY e-mails begging for my help in getting rid of:

-sand fleas
-grass fleas
-gnats
-earwigs
-weevils
-house flies
-spiders

Lindsay Ferrier: Bug Killing Expert!

The spider queries, though, led to some very interesting personal stories…

“I have been known to suck the spiders I find on the bedroom walls or ceilings with a vacuum, yank the vacuum cleaner bag out, douse it in lighter fluid and set it ablaze in the driveway. They scare me so much I have to make sure they’re dead. The ones I find outside and in other rooms of the house I just scream and run away from them. I know they’re important in pest control, but I’m a big scardey cat and just can’t handle them in skittering along on the ceiling.”

Another reader countered with this:

“I will suck up a spider then suck up a penny so it hits the spider in the head and kills it. Besides nothing can live in a vacuum its science!”

Which led to this…

“I popped something in the toaster yesterday – zap – sizzle and smell of burning flesh – not long – it must have been a small spider… Heard it was their mating season..”

Which led to… brace yourselves… THIS.

“My ex-husband once caught a mouse in the toaster and tried to cook him to death. The mouse escaped, and was running around the house leaving blood trails from the singe marks on his belly. I made him buy me a new toaster. He handed it to me and said “here, I found this next to the mouse traps.”

Hmm. I wonder why she’s not still married to that guy???

As I said, it’s been a VERY interesting week. And I guess I have my fruit flies to thank for it. My… now dead… fruit flies. Rest in peace, ya little bastards.

I’ll leave you with this gem from a commenter known as “JB”–

“As they say — time flies like an eagle, fruit flies like a banana.”

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Fruit fly-free- AND LOVING IT.