Gaaaah! Stupid flies! Stupid me!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I did something completely idiotic a while back. I threw away a freezer-burnt hunk of ground pork (in a plastic baggie) into the garbage. I didn’t even think about the fact that maybe, it wouldn’t stay frozen forever, and that it may not stay in the baggie.

So last night, a bunch of tiny red-eyed flies came flying out of my garbage! I hadn’t even smelled anything out of the ordinary, and I’d seen them before, but thought they were random gnats! Now the bag is in the trash, obviously. And so far I’ve killed almost twenty of the damn mini-flies, and am in the process of cleaning up the blood they’ve left behind on the walls and such after I squish 'em. But there are others I haven’t caught yet, I know, and if I don’t, they’ll grow up and… arrrgh!

This is the first time in all the years I’ve lived on my own this has ever happened to me. This didn’t even happen in FLORIDA (though there, there was a dumpster right a few feet away from my door). Now I have to worry about flies crawling around diseasing stuff, getting into my food, maybe (worst case scenario) crawling into the vents of my laptop (albeit one still covered by AppleCare).

Arrrrrgh!!!

(Worst part is, I’m not even sure it WAS the ground pork that caused this. But it seems the most likely.)

2

I already have heartburn. Now you are giving me nausea too! :eek:

3

Sounds like fruit flies. Try filling an old can or container with vinegar. Cover it with plastic wrap, but leave a small opening so the flies can enter. They’ll go in but won’t be able to go out. Good luck. Repeat as needed.

4

We do something similar for earwigs. Kills 'em by the hundreds, doesn’t make much dent in their numbers.

5

The best day to clean out your fridge/freezer is trash day. I’m super paranoid about something similar happening to me, so I just leave old food in the fridge/freezer until it can go right out on the curb.

Of course, some trash days I forget to scope out the fridge/freezer or am in just too much of a hurry to do it that day, so old food sometimes sits around a few extra weeks in the fridge/freezer.

But, it’s harmless there. No flies :slight_smile:

6

Never heard of the vinegar thing, but that sounds like a great idea.

If they’re fruit flies, just cut off their food source for a day, and they’ll be gone. Nasty to have, but amazingly easy to get rid of.

7

Well, they’re still hanging around. They may be trapped, though. And I don’t have any fruit-related sources of food around. Mebbe that means they’ll just die out if I don’t catch 'em. :stuck_out_tongue:

How can I tell the difference between a juvenile fly and a fruit fly?

8

Fruit flies are really tiny. If you can tell the color of their eyes, they’re not fruit flies.