Some time last week, my home office was infested with fruit flies. I’m not sure how it happened. Usually fruit flies are attracted to (among other things) fruit, and everyone who knows me knows that I have the worst time keeping fresh fruit in the house. How the fruit fly infestation occurred, I will never know.
So yesterday, being sick, I worked from home. This proves to be a challenge when you’re being annoyed all day with fruit flies flying in front of your face when you’re reading an important email or drawing a graphic. Productivity was WAY down due to the illness and my obsession with these little flying pieces of poo.
So what did I do? I spent the entire day swatting the flies out of the air. Thankfully, fruit flies are significantly slower than houseflies, making them a much easier mid-air target, even for a lumbering human in a DayQuil induced stupor. I must have killed 50 flies throughout the course of the day.
…But these puppies just keep on coming! I returned home late last night, and while checking my email I was pestered yet again, and had to put down 5 more.
WikiHow had some great ideas for getting rid of them (none of which are worth the effort of trying), but also some disturbing news. Fruit flies have a life expectancy of only 10 days, anyway. This makes each fly-icide on my part even more futile. Why even waste the energy killing the things when they’re just going to die in a few more days anyway?
So instead of hacking at the leaves, I went on a cleaning rampage. I took out all the garbages, vacuumed, cleaned around the baseboards, all the time looking for the smoking gun – the stinky organic mess that the flies must be hatching in… with nothing!
I’m banking on the fact that it was just something in the trash can and that it’s just a matter of time now…
But until they’re gone, the war rages on!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I just recently discovered a fun and challenging pastime, I now try to remove the flies from my house using the central vac hose and sometimes long attachments. You have to sneak up on them when the are landed. If you can catch one mid-flight then you are considered a master….it is challenging and fun (and maybe a little bit of a waste of power.)
We’re having the same problem at our office from over-watered plants. The most frustrating thing is when the fly so close to your face that you can’t see them well enough to kill mid-flight. Well, that and having to frantically wave your hand in front of your face like an idiot when talking to customers. I feel your pain!