The Great Fruit Fly War of '07

I'm not sure where fruit flies come from, but I'm pretty sure I know where most of them end up: in my kitchen. I can go days, nay, weeks without spotting one of the little bastards, and then someone leaves out one dodgy apple and they descend in clouds within minutes. Do they spontaneously generate out of the air, or are they just lurking in the cupboards ready to descend at the first whiff of rotting fruit?

And at the moment, we have an infestation of biblical proportions. After days of battling my way through the thunderheads of fruit-flies to get to the sink, I decided to take a decidedly non-Zen approach to the problem and eradicate them. The internet is a wealth of information when it comes to obliterating just about anything. Judging by the number of sites which come up when one Googles "fruit fly infestation", I'm not the only one bend on a pitiless offensive to annihilate the tiny, little terrorists.

I quickly found out how to make a fruit-fly trap, which involved nothing more than a mason jar, a rubber band and some Saran wrap. I put an abused raspberry at the bottom of the jar, covered it with the wrap and secured it with a rubber band. After a couple of pokes through the wrap with a bamboo skewer and , voila, my evil plan was underway. And it worked! Those little suckers jumped right in! (Cue accompanying maniacal laughter: "HA-ha-ha-haaaa!")

After a couple of days, I cleaned out the jar (because fruit flies + disintegrated raspberry + larva = ewwww.) and started all over again. But I still had way too many fruit flies for my liking. Annihilation was not complete.

So, remembering that "time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana", I gave that a shot. Man, they couldn't wait to dive into that trap; that banana chunk was like fruit-fly crack! Within a couple of hours there were line-ups to get in there. I couldn't believe it. Here is a picture of the fruit fly trap, complete with disgusting banana and mob of fruit flies. I'll warn you, it isn't pretty.

The trap seems to be working, but I am a mite concerned that fruit flies from other houses have heard about the amazing buffet at Chez Loudshoes and are coming from all over just to get a shot at it. As many flies as are in the trap, there seems to be just as many in the kitchen, still. But the trapping of a kajillion fruit flies is abundantly satisfying, and although I am a wee bit distrurbed at how much I am enjoying it, I'll take any kind of satisfaction wherever I can find it.