RHYS BOWEN: Dear God, if you're listening and you don't mind I have a small question. Why did you create fruit flies? And for that matter house flies that only spread disease or mosquitos that spread disease and also bite? What use are they in the great fabric of things? Fruit flies breed on decaying fruit and as far as i can see don't do anything useful. In fact they infect good fruit and here in California where the fruit industry is huge, we are supposed to trap and eradicate them.
Were you not concentrating the day that fruit flies were made? Were you already bored or tired after the creation of large things like dinosaurs and wooly mammoths so that you handed over the last few days of creation to a lesser heavenly being, one slightly less competent?
Anyway this blunder in creation has turned a peaceful, gentle being like myself into a ruthless killer. It all started a week ago when I brought home some organic tomatoes. When I opened the plastic box one small creature flew out. One tiny, harmless flying thing.. or so I thought. Until the next night when I was sitting, enjoying a glass of wine. I looked up and two tiny creatures were happily swimming around in my glass.
Then it was quite a few around the flowers I had just bought. I carried them out to the garbage bin. But the darned things kept appearing. I Googled and tried various traps: apple cider vinegar (didn't work). Honey (didn't work). Red wine... works well. At one stage my kitchen counter looked like a science experiment.
Where were they coming from? I had put all fruit and veg into the fridge but there they were, sitting on the rim of the bowl containing the wine. And cunning little buggers too.. If I moved my hand near to squash them they flew away. I tried bringing down the fly swatter rapidly, thus knocking them down into the wine. They swam across to the side and started to climb out. I squashed one on my thumb, then watched as he readjusted his wings and tried to fly off.
It was only when I found some in the pantry that I learned the horrid truth. At the back of the potato bin was a rotting potato where they were happily breeding. I've taken it out, scrubbed it, scrubbed the floor and now I hope it's just a case of rounding up the last survivors. But I've been spending half my day killing! Every time I come into the kitchen I see one, sitting at the edge of the wine. I creep up, fly swatter in hand and bring it down. Only to find the wretched thing has escaped again. It is becoming an obsession. So... if anyone knows a brilliant way to get rid of fruit flies, please share.
And God, if you can share a moment from more pressing things like defending Greenland from invasion or protecting innocent people from ICE, could you possible un-make the fruit flies?
Oh, I can so relate, Rhys . . . those annoying little creatures are everywhere and, sad to say, I haven't yet found anything that will get rid of them ☹
ReplyDeleteUgh! We’ve heard to put wine corks in the fruit bowl - not sure if that really works, or if the wine just makes you care less. Returning to SoCal today - hopefully there won’t be any little friends waiting for us.
ReplyDeleteWell, most flies exist for other animals to eat. God did not expect us to bring fruit into a house. :) Years ago I found a terrific solution for fruit flies. Take a small jar with a metal lid. Flip the lid upside down and punch it full of holes with a nail. Fill the jar with a couple of inches of wine or fruit juice as bait, and put back on the lid. Voila, a trap! Put the trap near your fruit bowl. Drawn by the enticing aroma, fruit flies will cunningly find the holes to enter the trap, but somehow cannot figure out how to get out. Perhaps they are too drunk? Every few days, skim the dead fruit flies off the surface of the liquid and perhaps add some fresh. In my experience you will soon be fruit-fly-free. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteThat is my trap, too, Selden, except I just pop a small, flexible funnel upside down into a juice glass with wine in the bottom. The funnel should not touch the surface of the liquid. They fly in, but cannot fly back out.
DeleteWait, not upside down, just with the funnel pointed down. Still a bit muzzyheaded this morning.
DeleteBrilliant. Thank you Selden
DeleteThey are annoying. Selden's solution is the one that I have heard most often, usually using vinegar as bait. They aren't too bad around here in winter, but are relentless pests in the summer when they find ways into the house besides hitchhiking on ripe fruit. I think God has got some serious stuff going on these days, Rhys, so try Selden's trap.
ReplyDeleteVinegar didn’t work for me but wine did
DeleteDear God: Why did you create humans? They take good fruit and use it instead of waiting for it to rot as Nature intended. Plus, they seem intent on destroying us. Just the other day, one of them crushed Cousin Ziggy between his fingers and all he was doing was enjoying the rottenness of Nature's bounty (a banana, in this case). Really, God, you should have thought this through. One might begin to wonder if fruit flies were ever your Chosen. -- Sincerely, The Fruit Flies
ReplyDeleteSo true Jerry! Or maybe our dear god loves a good joke!
DeleteWe certainly need a good laugh these days. Thank you!
DeleteDrosophila! They are much used in research because they make new generations in the blink of an eye (I learned this from a bio major friend in college...). What worked for me last fall is like Selden's trap. I put apple cider vinegar in a jar, tightly rubberbanded plastic wrap over the top, and poked a few holes in the plastic. I set the jar near the countertop compost can where they were happily making new generations and within two weeks, not a fruit fly was seen except dead in the jar.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with yours!
I tried the vinegar and they didn’t like it but they liked wine.
DeleteOh Rhy, we all empathize! I put cider vinegar in a small shallow bowl, add a few drops of dishwashing dishwashing liquid. It does work, eventually.
ReplyDeleteThere is a product called Zevo that’s similar to a nightlight with a sticky surface. Plug it in close to your fruit bowl and the flies are attracted and get caught in the surface. From Mignonne in Arkansas
ReplyDeleteThank you. Good to know
DeleteWe had a fly infestation last summer and bought the Zevo but unfortunately it didn't work on the flies. It might work better for catching the smaller fleas.
DeleteThe flies said let us flea the scene.
Sorry you are going through this Rhys! Though it does give you a reason to open some red wine.Benjamin Franklin famously said that beer is evidence that God loves us and wants us to be happy. I think it applies to wine as well.
ReplyDeleteMy unhelpful fruit fly story: When my parents were elderly, my sister's half-wild long-haired cat Sami went to live with them. Sami flourished there--she had laps to sit on, food, and not a whole lot of chaos around her. At some point, my parents had a fruit fly infestation and decided to use sticky strips to capture the flies. Somehow one of the strips got stuck in poor Sami's fur. The resulting attempts to unstick Sami caused several injuries and much hilarity. Eventually Sami was free. Red wine would have been a better solution.
Poor Sami!
DeleteDear Rhys, and perhaps God – when you solve the fruit fly problem, would you please consider the white fly problem. They have secret homes on all my plants. They laugh at fly-be-gone, soap, hoses, alcohol though I have not tried the red wine and even picking off. I refuse to give in and destroy all my plants, and have so far excluded inviting aphids in as a spare army – they are as much of an issue as the white flies.
ReplyDeleteOh well, summer is coming – is it not? – and the doors will be open and maybe then I will not care.
As for part B of Rhys’s request, maybe you could that up to a priority before the flies, especially before someone’s greedy eyes begin to focus on Canada.
Amen!
DeleteDouble Amen! We love our Canadian neighbors. Plus the hubs just got his Canadian citizenship. "Oh Canada! Our home and native land..."
DeleteHaving a big garden with a wide variety of produce means fruit flies. As I mentioned to Selden above, I take a juice glass and pour a couple fingers of wine, then just drop a small silicone funnel pointy side down into it. The fruit flies crawl down, and can't get back out. Eventually, they fall into the liquid.
ReplyDeleteOur biggest pest problem is Indian meal moths, the ones that get into your pantry items. Steve keeps big supplies of bird food, including dried mealworms, and all of that attracts the moths. He keeps it all out in the garage, but the door opens near the pantry, and they find their way to the good stuff handily. There is a flypaper-like trap we use, but it doesn't get them all.
Then there are the Asian ladybugs (imported for pest control, then becoming pests themselves), and brown marmolated stinkbugs. These guys love to help themselves to overwintering inside homes, usually unwelcome. So far this winter I have only heard one stinkbug inside--they make a huge racket trying to fly through windows, the silly things. They hide in bookshelves and other cozy crannies.
Luckily we don’t often get pests in California. I did try the funnel
DeleteApproach and they ignored it. But the liked wine in an open dish so they could fly away again.
We had a large bag of dog food years ago that we put into a large plastic container with a lid. But, even that didn't prevent whatever type of moth or bugs got in.
DeleteWe had them once - drawn by something rotting in a potato bin. The apple cider vinegar - dishwashing liquid trick worked, but it did take a while.
ReplyDeleteCan you add clothes moths to that question? Despite extreme efforts to get rid of them, I’m out of sweaters!
ReplyDeleteCedar wood strips might work (and smell wonderful). If you can stand the smell - mothballs work but the smell is probably toxic to humans as well.
DeleteThis post made me smile, Rhys. I hate all kinds of flies. Yet I’m fascinated by fruit flies. Imagine that tiny creature: a compressed biological machine with memory, decision-making, emotions-adjacent behavior, and a body plan that mirrors ours in miniature. So when you ask why God made fruit flies, I can’t help wondering if the fruit fly might have been the prototype for us.
ReplyDeleteOh! that could be possible Ang. But we didn't get the flying genes.
DeleteI feel your pain, Rhys! Usually, when the weather cools down, the fruit flies disappear. We had a fly-free period, then suddenly they were back. Turns out there was a rotting onion in the bin. I always use apple cider/drops of dish liquid in a shallow bowl, covered with plastic wrap and holes pierced in the plastic. It matters if I use a brand of apple cider with a good, strong smell. It worked and now we are fly-free for the rest of the winter, early spring.
ReplyDeleteWe had to tent our house for termites and afterwards we had an invasion of ants (apparently the ants enter the house to eat the leftover dead termites). It took about a month to eradicate them but it was pretty much a process of catching them with a paper towel with a small amount of water & clorax each morning and at night wiping down the counters, cabinets, etc with clorax. We put out the ant traps but they didn't work that well.
ReplyDelete