Adventures in Catching Fruit Flies

It happens every time I spend the day studying at home: Coconut wants to go out on the balcony. Then she wants to come in. Then she wants to go out. Then she wants to come in. Then she wants to go out. Then she... you get the picture.

So instead of constantly getting up to open the door for The Cat Queen, I prop the door open. Problem: insects, particularly fruit flies. Since I usually have bananas out and The Queen loves her tuna, we attract flies when the door is open. I consider the flies her guests. Or her prey. But she refuses to engage them on either count, playing the aloof host.

On one recent Saturday morning, I counted at least a dozen fruit flies circling the empty space between the living room and the dining room--at my eye level. They might be her guests, but they were my pests. (ha! funny rhyme.) Instead of studying, I decided my new procrastination technique would be to get rid of the flies.

I would make my own fly traps.

This seems to be a common theme, making it myself. I attribute this tendency to something I call the Bolivia Effect. The Bolivia Effect comes from living in rural, mountainous Bolivia where we didn't have access to convenience stores and if we missed something or needed something or had a problem we had to do it ourselves. (Except the frog infestation--my students took care of those for me.) For instance, there was the time I boiled vegetables to kill the maggot infestation, the other time I used eucalyptus leaves to eradicate bugs from a pillow, the time we broiled bagels, the specialty coffee recipes we invented, or the time I took my computer apart to vanquish the itsy bitsy spiders inside the monitor. Basically: the Bolivia Effect equals a mini-adventure.

So I made three kinds of fly traps:

1) Flypaper: syrup and brown sugar dried on strips of a brown paper bag. In the picture, they're drying...


2) Vinegar and Sugar in a jar with holes in the lid. (Have you ever studied the amazing properties of vinegar? Seriously THE best liquid to have on hand.)



3) Fruit in a jar with saran-wrap on top with pin-prick holes. The idea is that the flies will crawl into the holes to get to the fruit, but then not be able to leave.



Strangely enough, none of the traps worked and the flies left with the sunset. I don't know where they went. They come back whenever I open the door, and leave with the sun. (The inverse of vampires or trolls?)

Slowly, I started throwing out my failed attempts at catching fruit flies, thinking that maybe one of them might still work. And one did:

Yesterday I noticed three dead flies in the vinegar jar. It works--even two weeks later. It's the coolest thing. One of the fly traps works! Hooray!

Of course, now that it's supposed to snow tomorrow, it will be too cold for the door, for the flies, or for mini-adventures. This is good.

I have a 6pm Wednesday deadline for my next workshop submission. The next two days are devoted to writing up a storm. If only there were blueprints for inspiration traps too. That would be a diversion worthy of procrastination!