# Help! Fruit fly invasion! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 29, 2012, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202 "2012-03-29T20:39:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202/21 "2012-04-02T18:50:42Z")
My friend the exterminator told me to do this: Wash all your fruit with water very carefully, rubbing the skin with a paper towel or cloth towel. (Gets the eggs off.) Onions tend to have fruit flies, too - but I don’t use water on them. You can peel a few layers of paper off. Pour bleach down the drain and rinse with boiling water. Fill your garbage disposal to the top with ice. Add some bleach. Put a plate or something over the hole to avoid backsplash and turn it on, then turn on the water. I now clean the garbage disposal every few days by grinding the ice. It works great! ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202/22 "2012-04-02T18:51:48Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > 1. Take a shallow bowl. > 2. Fill it half full of a 50/50 mixture of **apple cider vinegar & lime juice**. (This is fruit fly crack.) > 3. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap. > 4. Tear a hole in the center of the wrap the size of a quarter. > 5. Leave it where they congregate for a few days. > > (I had an infestation a few weeks ago and I killed several hundred of the little buggers over the course of a few days using this method.) We get an infestation about once a year and this method always works like a charm. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202/23 "2012-04-02T18:58:25Z")
Don’t forget to WASH your garbage cans, all of them - even the one in your bedroom that never gets food put into it because chances are at some point in time something remotely edible has been tossed in there and is adhering desperately under the rim. Ours get taken out onto the deck and washed out thoroughly with soap and water, sprayed with bleach, rinsed multiple times and then left out in the sun to finish drying out. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202/24 "2012-04-02T19:12:12Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > It’s not just fruit you have to worry about, either. I had a fruit fly invasion once that I eventually traced to some rotting potatoes. Ah yes. We also like to play “What’s That Smell?” (Hint: it’s a potato. It’s always a potato.) ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202/25 "2012-04-02T19:25:33Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Ah yes. We also like to play “What’s That Smell?” (Hint: it’s a potato. It’s always a potato.) I call that game “Name That Smell” (for you young’uns, that’s a takeoff on [Name That Tune](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_That_Tune)). It’s especially fun to play right away when you walk in the door after being gone for a few days. In our most recent case, it wasn’t a potato. It was a kamikaze ex-squirrel in our water heater flue. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-fruit-fly-invasion/617202.md?page=1)