Over the past four or five days we’ve had these huge flies - about half an inch long, and silent when flying - appearing in our house. We kill one, and the next day another shows up. Tonight they seem to have escalated things; my husband has killed three or four of them already.
We lived in this same house last year and I don’t remember having lots of big flies at this time of year. In fact, I don’t remember seeing them around a lot in the past couple months either, just over the last four or five days. The rate at which they’ve been showing up makes me think they’re hatching from somewhere (eeeeew) but why hatch in the wintertime?
Any ideas on why they are showing up now, where they might be coming from, or how to get rid of them? And before you ask, yes we do take our garbage out regularly and keep a reasonably clean house.
Sounds like you have attic flies, son. We used to get them in the winter, too. You could go up into the attic and put up some of those sticky paper strips to catch some of them, but as far as I know, there’s really no way to eradicate them completely. It’s not a question of how clean you keep your home, either. Attic flies especially love older houses that have nice nooks and crannies in which to hide their eggs. Since the average life span of a fly is about a week, you should be sweeping thier little corpses from your window sills soon, gone until next year.
You don’t know about flies, man. There’s nothing compares to the Russian Vampire Fly.
My first few weeks in St. Petersburg ('round about September 1995) I kept waking up with these nasty itchy welts on my hands. I figured they were mosquito bites but I never saw any skeeters in the apartment. Sizable family of flies, though. I started getting suspicious but I dismissed the thought.
Until I succeeded in swatting one of the bastards.
Left a nice sticky squish of what was unmistakeably human blood on the wall. From then on it was a war to the death against the flies in my apartment and I kept them windows CLOSED.
Glad to know I’m not alone! My co-worker calls them “winter flies”. I, also, have been seeing a new, fat fly in the apartment every day or 2…lethargically (sp?) buzzing around my window blinds. Lissa is right, too. If I don’t kill them, I eventually just find their upturned bodies lying on the sill.
Ahhh. The idea of attic flies does make sense, since we’re noticing them first in the upstairs bedrooms. Thank you.
I’m glad to hear we won’t be swatting them all winter (even if it is cute to see the husband running around swatting at them ) and gladder still that they aren’t vampire flies. We did have some sort of flying biter for a while, but these critters seem to be annoying but otherwise harmless.
) and gladder still that they aren’t vampire flies. We did have some sort of flying biter for a while, but these critters seem to be annoying but otherwise harmless.