The Great Fruit Fly Invasion of 2009

Fruit flies are common, not so common you see them every day. Common enough, that the occasional piece of fruit gone bad (so sad) brings them out and annoy you until you have cleaned the mess and swatted at them until you are so irritated you can scream....and then they are gone.

Last week we asked Savannah to empty the garbage in one of the bathrooms. She had a fit because there were fruit flies around the garbage. World War Three ensued and eventually the Allies (Mom and Dad) won and Savannah took the garbage out of the house screaming that they were following her and somebody open the door.

I decided to go see how bad it was. It wasn't and then I lectured the kids about taking food upstairs and throwing food away in the garbage cans that WERE NOT emptied every day. After my superior lecture on the proper care of garbage, Noah and Baylee both looked at me and said, "Did you look up?" Huh?

I go back up to the bathroom, look up and find like millions, OKAY, hundreds of fruit flies. GROSS. I almost felt bad about Savannah screaming at that point. ALMOST.

So I opened the window, took off the screen and tried to shoo them out. It didn't work. No worries, I'm a fighter. I grabbed my environmentally friendly bottle of Windex made with vinegar and went after the buggers (get it? buggers).

After half a bottle of Windex, nearly an entire roll of paper towels and after 125 captured or killed, I stopped counting.

By that time I was a bit cheeky. In my best accent (of which I have none), I meandered around the bathroom telling the evil doers "Say 'ello to my leetle fren'." I would catch them, squish them and show them to the remaining fruit flies with the understanding that they were next.

Eventually, there were but two left...until I went into the other bathrooms. Savannah and Felix had been doing research at this point and found the best remedy for capturing fruit flies.

Put about a half inch of apple cider vinegar in a cup, cover REALLY TIGHTLY with plastic wrap and poke with small holes. Place the cup where the fruit flies gather and they will crawl through the holes and get trapped. On occasion, the nasty critters will find a way out, but overall there is a 90+% success rate.

AWESOME!!!

Lessons Learned
1. No one is eating upstairs again ever...especially fruit. Fruit is a kitchen only food.
2. The internet really DOES have all the information you could possibly imagine.
3. I think I may have a dark side when it comes to critter killin'.
4. We all have to do things we don't want to, but in this case I WANTED TO.
5. We are down to about 2 in the whole house and they don't have long to live!