The Common Fruit Fly

Warning: Post not for the weak-hearted...

We had a recent infestation of fruit flies in the house as of late. Thankfully, there are only a select couple of fruit flies still left in the Odom household. Two weeks ago, however, there were swarms! It started in the pantry. We noticed a few fruit flies in there when we'd go in to get something. Kevin thought maybe it was the potatoes sitting in a basket in the floor. We removed & eventually discarded the potatoes, but the fruit flies just grew in number. Like all things that sneek up on you if you don't attend to them (laundry comes to mind), all of a sudden, we had fruit flies everywhere. At any point and time you could spot half a dozen resting on the faucet, another dozen hanging out on dishes left in the sink. You would run the water and a swarm would be disturbed. One even found its way upstairs in the playroom. Something had to be done.

So, I pull out my trusty laptop and found this helpful information on wikihow.com.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies

We opted for the soda bottle trap. Of course, I still had to find the source. I roll up my sleeves one evening while Kevin's at school and the girls are already in bed & tackle the pantry. Since that was the first place we noticed them, the source is sure to be there, right? So, an hour or so later after cleaning out, throwing out, and a lot of clorox wipes, I came to the corner in the pantry where they were the thickest...lo and behold there was Mallory's lunch bag. Mind you, it hadn't seen the light of day since the end of school in May. Flies covered the lunch bag and several empty grocery bags lying around it in the floor as well. I didn't even want to know. I carefully picked it up, moved it to the trash and took it outside. The source had been found. Finished cleaning out the pantry, put another home made fruit fly soda bottle trap in there and called it a night. After three soda bottle traps and a couple of days, things were almost back to normal.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I told Mallory later that I was going to have to get here a new lunch bag because there was something in it that attracted all those flies. She replied with "Oh yeah - there was a lunchable and a banana in there. I forgot." Yep. Since MAY. Yum-o.