In which I Claim Victory over the Fruit Flies, and invent a Device of Great Usefulness In Combating Flying Insects

So I think the Age of the Fruit Fly is finally coming to an end in the Peevie domicile.

I googled how to get rid of fruit flies, and tried a couple of tricks I learned from the Internet, like stretching plastic wrap over a bowl of cider vinegar and poking little holes in it, which would theoretically trap the unsuspecting flies once they crawled under the wrap for a dip and a nosh. That method was not particularly successful, as I noted in my earlier fruit fly post.

I picked up fly paper at the hardware store, and hung the strips in the fly-populated corners of my kitchen. For some reason they seemed to prefer the dark and narrow space behind the kitchen door, even though there is no food or dirty dishes there. But every time someone opened or closed the door, a cloud of flies would dust up, and I’d grab one of the fly paper strips and start waving it madly through the air, catching two flies for every forty that simply relocated.

Mr. Peevie did his own research, and purchased a couple of fruit fly traps over the Internet. They are little screw-cap bottles with bait and fly-paper inside. They’ve been OK at catching flies, but more often than not, I see the flies congregating on the outside of the bottle instead of sliding down the chute of death.

As I was fecklessly chasing teensy-weensy airborne acrobats with ribbons of sticky death one day, I thought to myself, “This sure would be a lot easier and more effective if I had something wider than a ribbon to catch the flies with. Something like a sticky fly-swatter.”

And the rest is history. I bought a new fly-swatter, wrapped fly-paper around it, and went on a drosophila rampage this afternoon. I am not even kidding you, this is the best invention for the insect-bedeviled since the fly swatter itself.

As I sit here writing this post, the occasional fruit fly wanders by my face nonchalantly, little suspecting that its tiny life is about to come to a sticky end. I calmly pick up my homemade fruit fly capturing contraption, serenely give a wave, and voila! The fruit fly is history.

Now if I can get a patent for this deal, my future is secure. And, I'm hoping, fruit-fly-free.