Fly Fly Away
Yesterday I was sitting at my dining room table reading emails when my 2 year old asked if she could have a sip of my water. There wasn’t much water left in my cup when I handed it to her. I looked in the cup and noticed something unusual.
Then everyone started screaming….
Can you see what is frozen to my ice cube?
Ewwwwww.
I need help. My house is overrun with flies. I do not live on a farm. I do not live near a farm. I live on a military base. A base that has been attacked by flies. As I type this on my porch, flies are everywhere. Yesterday I killed 15 on one window.
My house is not dirty, I am pretty strict about people cleaning up after themselves around here. But even my obsessive cleaning is not enough. How do I get rid of these flies? We scrubbed out our garbage can and they are still there. We seal and bag all of our garbage. We don’t have pets. How do I get rid of these pests? What has worked for you? Please help! I don’t want to be the old lady who swallowed the fly!
For more Friday Show and Tell visit my friend Mary.
EWWW! Thats gross!
Well, if you’re patient enough, maybe you can freeze the rest of ‘em—
okay, that wasn’t very helpful, was it?!? ;o)
Wish I had some great advice here, but we’ve just been having to swing the ol’ swatter around–we seem to have had more flies this year as well and I’ve been bagging trash and scrubbing and cleaning with the best of ‘em.
Good luck–and watch those cubes–YIKES!
Blessings!
After five years in Italy, where flies are practically the Italian national bird, I don’t have great advice, except that everyone has to open and close doors to the outside very quickly. (I know that is hard with littles.)
Our cats used to eat them or at least injure them so I could get them swept up, but I really can’t see you going there.
I am assuming your neighbors are doing the same cleanups you are, so that there’s no chance of attracting extra flies to your block?
What about getting Venus fly traps and turning it into a science project - guaranteed to succeed!
I’ll check with our houseguests - survivors of three years in Naples - to see if they have any tips.
Hi,
I wasn’t able to tell if the fly you showed was the one that is kind of shiny with different almost fluorescent colors or the nasty ones that bite with red eyes. For the “pretty” one, those are usually drawn to carrion. Have you checked around for any dead animals nearby? If it’s the nasty ones, they are either searching for food or it is going to rain. When I used to stay in Minnesota they would accumulate on you or the screens by the dozens. Here in Illinois we had a dead cat in some bushes near the house and they gravitated into the house every time the door was opened, and especially in the garage. I gave the boys a nickel for every fly they swatted and my husband put up fly paper strips. Within one week of removing the dead cat and putting up the strips and using the kids as exterminators, they are finally gone. According to my neighbor, an 88 year old sweetheart, he says that sometimes weather patterns such as we have been having with the hot/cold extremes this summer can cause them to swarm.
Hope this helps!
Anna
I’ve heard that having mint growing around your doors keeps them away. Maybe you could try some water with peppermint oil in it and spray it all around your doors???? Good luck!
ewwww! I am glad it was noticed before the glas was drinken out of!
We have a bunch outside here too - they are driving me crazy!
Ick! My cats love to eat flies. I personally think it is gross but they do an awesome job of getting them out of the windows.
Go to a feed store and see if you can find the type of fly stuff that you leave outside the horses stall. ( to attract flies else where) They eat it and die. Fly strips are messy but they do work. We actually have used flea bombs in our house to help control flies. When we lived in Death Valley Ca. nothing helped. We just kept a fly swatter in hand!
OK…I asked the Insects writer for About.com (I work for them, too - disclaimer) and here is what she said:
(snip)
Regarding the flies, zikes. Flies are looking for any decaying, moist substance they can find for breeding purposes. Besides pet waste and garbage, things like fermenting fruit (such as from fruit trees in the yard) or anything dead will attract them. Could she have a dead mouse or something in the wall, without knowing it? Just some ideas.
In addition to looking for the source of the problem (i.e. what’s attracting them), she can use some pheromone-laced fly strips to catch the ones flying around. These are supposed to be really effective. If her fly problem is inside the house, I think she should try placing the fly strips just outside the house, especially near the doors. If she uses them inside, she might actually attract more of them. The idea is to put something they really want (the pheromone) away from the place they are infesting (the house) to draw them away and then trap them. Here’s a tidbit from the forum, where I answered a similar question recently:
Sticky or bait traps - Not sure what kind you are using, but there are sticky traps that incorporate the sex pheromone muscalure which are supposed to be quite effective. Muscalure functions as an aggregation pheromone, meaning it gets the flies to congregate where you want them to - in the trap. Some brands include Musca-Cide, Musca Stik, Musca Doom, and Musca Terminator. I read that these traps can attract and capture flies by the hundreds, if not thousands.
(snip)
Hope this helps!
Sorry you are having to deal with those pesky things. I hate it when I hear a fly buzzing around in the house. I can’t imagine killing 15 on ONE window! Yikes!
Icky!!!!! We do live in the country with farms surrounding us, but some years are just worse than others with flies. The last year we had a real problem we found those old-fashioned sticky flypaper strips (I saw several other commenters mention them) and put them up near the doors. They worked better than I could have hoped, and really did help with the problem. So that’s what I would recommend! Good luck!!!
Blessings,
Kym
I don’t have any advice about how to get rid of them because it sounds like you are doing all the right things. Thank goodness you didn’t swallow the fly!
Oh, I feel for you. Unfortunately I don’t have any ideas on how to get rid of them. Hope someone else will be able to help you get rid of those pesky critters.
Oh, that was close! Lucky it didn’t let loose from the ice while you were drinking *grin* Sorry don’t have any suggestions on how to fix the problem though
We get them in the house as soon as the windows open and I hate them but I just send the kids off with the fly swatter 
Ewwww… (wrinkling nose)
Okay, now that I’m over (sort of) that gross-ness, here is a recipe out of an herbal book that I have (have not personally tried yet), “Herbal Homekeeping,” by Sandy Maine:
“If you live where flies routinely cause problems in the summer, you’ll love this recipe. Your windows will be sparkling clean, and the fresh lemon juice and peppermint oil in the formula discourages the pesky critters from perching on your windows again.
Before you wash the windows, whisk away dust and dead bugs from the casing using a small, handheld broom. For the shiniest windows, use sheets of newspaper (black and white only) to scrub and shine them. The newspaper ink may darken your hands, but it shines the windows without streaking.
Lemon-Mint Window Wash
Juice from one fresh lemon
2 cups water or club soda
1/2 teaspoon peppermint essential oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
Mix all ingredients and pour into plastic spray bottle. Shake well before using.”
I sincerely hope this works!!! Thanks (sort of) for sharing this with us today. LOL!
Have a great weekend!
~Shani
What Nancy and Shani said sounds like the route I would go. I had problems last year but not so this year. So…. I have bookmarked this just in case I need to do things myself. I sure hope things are solved soon. I am soooo glad you are a regular on S&T and TWT. ((HUGS))
Blessings and ((HUGS)) my SSiC
In Him<
-Mary
At least your 2 yr old didn’t try and drink it!!
I wish I could help you with an answer!! I don’t have one!! We have flies, only some, even in Az so we use a flyswatter.
I know~that doesn’t help much with more than 15 on just one window!! Sorry! Maybe a flystrip!!
Hope you find a solution!
Robyn
Ewwwww! I’m so sorry. I wish I had some advice for you. I like the peppermint and lemon window wash idea.
Two suggestions:
1) Buy an anole (a.k.a. chameleon). It will eat all the flies you can catch. Catching flies keeps the kids busy, too.
2) Buy an electronic bug-zapper.
3) Fly paper?
That’s OK. I found a fly (or spider; can’t remember which) trapped under a lid that I’d been using to close up my blueberries. I just flicked it away and continued using the berries.
“What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”
Okay, I’m thoroughly grossed out. I would not be a happy camper there. I guess the guys on the base need to stop bleeding so much, and get rid of there kills more thoroughly…
Just kidding. I’m in a wierd mood. I hope that they leave soon.
Carol
Bleah. Used to have this problem when we lived near cows. We don’t live there anymore.
But that’s not why we moved, just a fringe benefit.
That’s gross. LOL..
It looks like you got some helpful advice already - I hope it works for you.
Antoinette
OMG! It is a little funny to me because the almost the exact same thing happened to me, but I almost swallowed a fly at the bottom of my glass of OJ. Yuck, I thought I would die!
I have a fly problem too and I read online to get cedar wood and put it around your house and near doors. And my mother-in-law said to hang dryer sheets near doors and windows. I haven’t tried that yet. I just don’t leave my doors open until late night.
Sometimes I get so caught up in swatting flies that I see my 2 year old running around with a rag, swatting the air yelling, “dang flies!” HA!
Goodluck to you,
Kalisha
I don’t have any solutions for your fly problem. But if it’s any consolation, I don’t want you to be the lady who swallowed a fly either.
I hope one of the many solutions left in your comments helps.
I have horses so I feel your pain…the flies are everywhere! I’ve heard leaving standing water around (like in bowls) works. But I haven’t had any success with it. I use Hot Shot Kitchen Bug Killer - but I only use it around the floor base.
I used to live up North in Canada and on the Island which I have resided, we used to get hit each summer with Cluster Flies. Well the name lets you know…they come in CLUSTERS…and lots of them. I found out that they were brought in inside the bricks that people used to build their houses. Each fall…the ones that you didn’t manage to kill, which was LOTS of them…..would lay their eggs inside the houses and so next spring…there they were again. Killing 15 at one time was NOTHING. It was gross….I hated them….and no matter what I tried (and many others) just wasn’t working, accept the sticky tapes. As gross as I thought they were, hanging in your house, they worked. I know that ‘bombing’ the place in the spring and fall was also very helpful, but you had to keep it up to stay on top of it. You never won the war but at least you could see a lot less of them. As much as I miss ‘my island’ I do NOT miss the cluster flies. Hope you find something that helps you.
My kids bought a fun thing that kills bugs. It is shaped like a small plastic tennis racket and runs on batteries. When you swat at a fly with it they somehow become zapped and die. It makes a loud pop which is kind of scary but the kids love it. Our problem was that they went outside and couldn’t find any bugs to swat at. It sounds like your kids could stay busy for a while.