We had just managed to rid the house of stinkbugs, when along came a new menace. Fruit flies.
I don’t know where they came from, but once they arrived they were everywhere. The kitchen was swarming with them. The under-the-counter garbage bin was rife with their buzzing. All the bathrooms, the office, studio, the living room and even our bedroom was alive with fruit flies.
I couldn’t peel a banana for my breakfast cereal without having to shoo them away. They settled arrogantly on the rim of my coffee cup. And while reading the paper, I could hear them buzzing around my head.
I tried a bug spray recommended for indoor and outdoor pests, liberally spraying every exposed surface. Clouds of spray wafted through the house. The fruit flies seemed to dote on it, gathering in groups at the edge of the sink as though organizing a party.
Google recommended traps, glass containers with apple cider vinegar laced with dish detergent. One site showed me how to make funnels from the tops of water bottles that would allow the flies to get into the container, but not get out. Another assured me that fruit flies love red wine. They did. I think they invited their friends.
I managed to capture a few flies, a dozen or so in each of the traps. Unfortunately, the life cycle of the average fruit fly made this mortality rate look ludicrous. Fruit flies lay 5,000 eggs at a time, and they grow from larva to adult in eight days. It was easy to see that within days we were going to have to move out of the house and call for the men in hazmat suits.
We doubled and redoubled our efforts. We emptied all the trash baskets. Garbage went into plastic bags and immediately out to the trashcan. We dried the sinks and practically stopped using water. I even stepped outside to peel my breakfast banana.
And the fruit flies kept coming.
Then a master gardener friend of ours stopped by to deliver a couple of new house plants. She saw my worried look and I told her about the fruit flies. I told her we were packing our bags to catch a flight to the South Pole. They don’t have fruit flies there.
“Bleach,” she said, nonchalantly. “Household bleach. Put a few drops in every drain at night before you go to bed. Do it for a week and the fruit flies will be gone.”
That was a week ago, and the fruit flies are gone. I’m not taking any chances though. The bleach bottle sits at the ready on the kitchen counter. And I have not yet canceled our flight reservations to the South Pole.
