Pesky Fruit Flies!
I had one of my not-sleeping-much nights last night. I went to bed around 10 pm and turned the light off about 11:30 but around 2 am, I woke up and that was it for about three hours. Anyway, I got up around 8-ish and I may go back to nap after lunch.
Actually, I really don’t feel too much like eating because I had a good portion of a traditional English breakfast this morning! Last night I looked in the refrigerator and saw a bowl with beans in it so this morning, I had beans, toast-and-Marmite and two fried eggs! What I was missing was the meat part–sausages and/or bacon and/or ham! Anyway, it is almost 2 pm and I am only just beginning to feel a little hungry.
Today so far I have done a quick vacuum of the dining and living rooms and a quick steam mop of the noticeably grubby bits of the floor. I have also glued a big world map belonging to Fred onto a bigger strip of an illustration board. The board was bigger than the map so he is cutting the edges off.
We are being plagued by fruit flies so I went on line to see what could be done! There was a huge list of things to do to get rid of them. The easiest so far is to spray them either with a glass cleaner like Windex or with a spray cleaner with bleach, both of which I happen to have. Oh, I also need to let hot water run into the pipe under the sink, where, apparently, they love to live! I don’t have a bottle brush to clean down there but perhaps half a cup of bleach will get rid of them. Tonight I am going to put out small bowls of water, red wine vinegar {or wine} with a little liquid dishwasher detergent in it. This, apparently, will attract them and capture them! I will let you know how it all turns out!
OK, lunch and then perhaps a nap!
"We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." – Booker T. Washington.
"We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change." — Katherine Hepburn
The dishsoap thing works.. plus, vinegar and baking soda down the drain for 10 minutes followed with boiling water helps too..
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Bleach down the drain. It works every time. They breed and live in the water in the pipes.
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hope you get rid of them soon. i know how annoying they can be. hope you sleep better tonight. take care,
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ryn: Thank you and I definitely will!
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I was delighted, when we lived in England, to hear that the British enjoy beans-on-toast for breakfast. I thought “gee that sounds like something I’d eat!” :o) !! I hope you get rid of those pesky fruit flies. The only time I’ve had them is when they’ve been attracted to over-ripe fruit in the house. Seemed like when I got rid of the fruit, they went too. At least that is one bug I’ve not been too bugged by! hugs, Nicky
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We had the pesky fruitflies once and they were persistent. Finally got rid of them by putting slices of apple in a glass jar, fit the jar with plastic wrap and secured that with an elastic band. Then poked small holes in the saran wrap – about the diameter of a plastic drinking straw. The idea is that the ripe fruit will attract the little stinkers and the holes are too small for them to escape through. It took me about three days to rid the house of them.Of course for this to work you have to make sure that there is no other fruit outside the jar to attract them. I took the jars outside away from the house to empty them. Just dumped the contents on the grass and gave the birds a meal.
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Oh I HATE fruit flies. Thanks for the tips!!!
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Yummy! English breakfasts! I haven’t had a proper English breakfast in a long while, but it is yummy and I’m sorry you didn’t get your bacon.
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You are not alone with the fruit fly plague. They drive me nuts… it is one way I’m forced to keep a clean kitchen. We were so spoiled here having trash pick up twice a week. Since the tornado decimated the garbage trucks it is now once a week. A week of garbage in 90+° heat sure makes some nasty smells…
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I’ve posted before about fruit fly traps. They really work. You have to roll a piece of paper into a cone shape that will fit in the top of a glass container (because I like to see how many I’ve caught). Snip off the end of the cone so that it makes a little hole. Then put 1/2″ of vinegar in the bottom of the glass container and tape the cone into the top (the tip of the cone shouldn’t touch the vinegar), and the flies will go into it and can’t get out. Works great! or here’s one that looks like it might work, only easier: http://www.cheeseslave.com/2011/01/18/how-to-make-a-fruit-fly-trap/
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We just hang up a no pest strip, and that seems to get them. I hate those flies!
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A friend of mine put red wine in a bowl. Then, she put plastic wrap over the bowl. She poked little holes in with a very sharp fork. They got in but couldn’t get out. It worked quickly even if she did have to waste some good wine.:)
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Good luck in getting rid of the fruit flies.
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Wish I knew about these remedies a few months ago…ended up spraying with wasp spray every day for a while, which I hated doing…..Good luck!
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