I will level with you internet, one of my greatest fears (I mean, literally, GREATEST FEAR) is getting mice in the apartment I live in alone. This is only moderately tempered by having a boyfriend who, whether he would admit it now or not, would be required to deal with the dead mouse bodies and put me up... well, forever, or until the mice were gone. I can deal with a lot things. I consider myself a strong person and I think I've weathered a lot and surely there's some shit coming down the pike. But. I. Cannot. Deal. With. Mice. Roaches, fine. Gross, but fine. As the original residents of 340 8th St can attest, if we lay traps and kill a mouse, I kid you not, all I can do is scream. Julia eventually ordered me out of the kitchen when my screaming also included breaking a glass. So then there was a dead mouse and broken glass. Awesome, Sarah.
Anyway, thank BABYJESUS, there are so far no mice here. But there are flour moths and there are fruit flies. The flour moths are easier to deal with because, honestly, I don't keep that much food around, so I just threw some of it away and it seemed to get better... but a girl forgets one plastic bag with an apple in it in the fruit basket for a couple of weeks... and there is no going back. They are everywhere, they are sitting on my toothbrush when I go to brush my teeth. They are sitting on the clean dishes in the dishrack. Gross. Ok, fine, I learned my lesson.... no more produce. Thats what they are trying to tell me, right?
So. I did what any reasonable person living in 2007 would do (except for the person who emailed me to ask how long it takes to drive from Madison to New Orleans. I, as nicely as I possibly could, referred her to googlemaps and/or mapquest), I googled "get rid of fruit flies."
The websites suggest putting a banana in a jar, covering it with plastic wrap and poking small holes in the plastic wrap to trap the fruit flies. Ok, fine, except everyone knows how hard it is to buy ONE banana, so I'd end up with, say, 4-5 bananas in this scheme. And we can't refrigerate bananas, so they'd go in the fruit basket. And isn't this EXACTLY WHAT THE FRUIT FLIES WANT? I think so. I think the fruit flies have made it to the internet and are posting in these forums.
Yes, I will tag this post both "theories" and "the deep end." Thank you for your patience.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
i have fruit flies in my office. an apple a day with the core thrown in the garbage = infestation. our problems are so eerily similiar, it's like we're married or something.
I have been meaning to tell you: I killed our first mouse in 42 Sterling Place last Saturday. I really had to step up to the plate as up until now my defense for making Juliet deal with the roaches has been: "I'm SOOOO much better with mice." Dealt with it I did, but there was still a lot of hooting and hollering and contorting my body in weird squeamish positions.
This is a gross suggestion:
Make an oven trap:
* Remove all available food from kitchen. Clean the dishes, place open items in ziplock bags or the fridge.
* Open the door of your oven and place a piece of fruit (banana or kiwi peels) in there overnight.
* Wake up early the next morning and quietly close the oven door.
* Turn on the oven to 400ºF/200ºC for about 10-15 minutes and majority of your fruit flies will be gone.
* Clean the oven thoroughly.
auschwitz for fruit flies? you madman, you.
Post a Comment