Saturday 31 December 2011

How to get rid of 'Fruit Flies'

Have you ever encountered those small, brick-eyed irritating flies in your kitchen or bathroom? Yes, i am talking about those irritating fruit flies....Fruit flies can be a common nuisance in many households, especially in the kitchen.

One morning, I suddenly encountered a couple of them in my kitchen. I was wondering what bought them here, as I had a habit of keeping my kitchen clean most of the times. Even our garbage bin had lid. Fruit flies are attracted by the smell of the ripe or rotten fruit and vegetables but we hardly had anything rotten in our kitchen. As an immediate action, I cleaned my kitchen and bins all over again assuming they would be gone by evening. To my surprise, it didn't happen. Rather they were multiplying hour by hour, day by day. They were driving me crazy.

Finally, when my cleaning and food and garbage hiding tricks didn't help me get rid of those tons of clumsy little fruit flies buzzing around my house, I started digging into Google. I got to learn a lot about these creatures (like they breed at damp n moist places, they multiply at supersonic speed by laying 500 eggs at a time, and are hard to get rid of, ehhh...). I also came across a couple of tricks and traps to get rid of them (to my surprise, i came to know that you can buy some ready-made disposable traps abroad). Below I have put the links which gave me ideas to get rid of these irritating flies. But the ingredients required to make these traps were not easily available to me. Hence, my irritation along with my study inspired me to do an experiment (oh no, here too, but yes I did and it worked ;P)

Let me quickly disclose to you what I did-
First I searched their breeding place, which was near my bins. Next step was to make my trap. Since the recommended traps needed wine or vinegar or ammonia which wasn't easily available, and since I had studied that they quickly dwell on the smell of ripe bananas or rotten bananas; I made my trap using bananas. I used a deep glass shaped plastic container with lid (to be specific, i used an empty but clean container of Amul dahi), made some small holes on it's lid, and inside the container, i kept some ripe bananas. I ensured that it is sealed properly and then kept it at their breeding place. Apart from this, i ensured that my kitchen was clean, no food item was left outside uncovered, and bins were properly covered. Then I left for my office.

On coming back home, to my surprise, there were a couple of flies trapped inside the box I had prepared to catch them. I was happy. I kept the box there for next 2 days after which there was a bunch of flies inside and the number was increasing outside.. Yeahhh I was happy. I took my box to a far and non-resident area and released the trapped flies there. After coming back, cleaned the box again, waited for it to dry and added fresh ripe bananas to catch the few leftover flies. in next 5 days, my kitchen was finally free from these small monsters. I took a sigh of relief!!

So now, if these flies are the reason of your headache too, dont worry, just try out this trap and relax..... Good Luck!!

Here are the links which helped in in this DIY task-

  1. http://www.diylife.com/2011/07/18/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies/
  2. http://howtogetridofall.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies
  3. http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies
  4. http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/shopping-storing/how-to-get-rid-fruit-flies-10000001648489/index.html
  5. http://howtogetridofall.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies

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