My house is very clean, except for the dozens of flies that have somehow invaded it. My friend broke off the end of the fly swatter(we mourned its passing, ol ethel had killed a lot of flies…) the other day while in the heat of battle. I’m too lazy to buy another one.
Fly paper would seem to be the obvious choice, although I couldn’t find it at my local grocery stores or walmart. I was thinking, a bowl full of beer? I know that’ll mess up slugs and other insects…
Actually, You can spray them with hairspray… Once it dries, the weight will prevent the fly from taking off… You can now torture and kill them at your leisure.
My dad and brother catch them by hand… but I never could quite get the knack of it, nor did I ever really feel the desire to have a squished fly in my hand at any time. YMMV.
My grandfather used to use buckets of some simple solution (I think vinegar and sugar) to help keep bugs away from his fruit trees. Unfortunately I don’t recall the details.
Personally, I find sales circulars or an old magazine can do the trick on the spur of the moment. Just don’t smash your knuckles.
Finally, there’s always the flamethrower approach that someone on the boards recommended for spiders. I hear a WD-40 can works pretty well…
Describe the psychological and physiological trauma you could inflict upon its little winged body if you used a swatter. Negotiate its exit from your home.
You can also use my Stun-A-Fly technique. Walk around your house making swatter-squashing-fly-on-wall sounds. It’s bound to make the flies die of tiny lil’ heart attacks.
Of course, you may be reported to the PETA… but you could tell them you were looking for extra protein for your diet, and that an intact fly is far more nutritious than a squashed fly (with a side of paint, acquired when you scrape it off from the wall.)
I keep a spray bottle of 100% ethyl alcohol by my desk. When a fly enters within squirting range, I just spray it in its general direction. It seems to do a pretty good job at knocking the fly out of the sky, allowing me to squish it with whatever’s available. The alcohol’s pretty volatile, so it evaporates quickly off of anything else that was hit by the spray, and soon all is back to normal!
(Note: I keep a spray bottle of alcohol in my office to clean beakers-n-stuff anyway; it has just proven to come in handy for more than just that. IANASAL [slovenly alcoholoic lush]–at least, not until after work.)
Don’t spray Raid on them, as it’s for crawling insects. All it will do is land on whatever surface is directly under it, and then the kitchen counter or the dining room table will be covered with bug spray. Also, it doesn’t have much “knockdown” power. You need bug spray that’s advertised as being for “flying insects”, like hornets and wasps.
If you don’t want to douse your living quarters with insecticide, then flypaper is definitely the way to go. Check at the DIY lumberyard (Handy Dan’s, Menards, etc.) or at farmer supply places like Farm & Fleet, Rural King (where do you live?). Also, serious hardware stores like True-Value and Ace Hardware have it, right next to the new flyswatters.
Put a roll in each room of your house, hanging from the chandelier.
Also, you need to figure out where the flies are coming from. That vast a quantity is almost certainly coming from garbage cans, or from “unpatrolled” dog poop. Check the yard–your nose will tell you where the fly hatchery is, 'cause it’ll stink.
BTW, you might want to e-mail Tuba and ask her to adjust your user name. We don’t normally put our e-mail addresses in our user names.
If you don’t mind getting fly on your hands there is a great technique for killing flies with your hands. When the fly lands place your hands slightly behind the fly with palms down. Your hands should be about one foot apart and about two inches above the surface the fly is on. Then clap your hands together so that they come together about one inch behind where the fly landed. The fly will sense the motion of your hand and will take off backwards right into where your hands are coming together. The fly will be killed and no need for poisons, just a hand washing.
Have a knife? That’s great fun–just hold it a few inches above the resting fly, and, uh, let 'er fly! Doesn’t work too well for a major infestation, though. Unless you’re a sadist…
Rubber bands are pretty effective, but I find certain words of power are better. In order to make them more effective it is best to concentrate them down a tube of non-conducting material such as a rolled up newspaper. I discovered that yelling “Maud d’ib” was fairly ineffective (but then I don’t even know how to spell it), but intoning “daimatherfakkingflaibasterd” whilst accelerating the non-conducting tube in the direction of the offending pest often results in the elimination of the insect.
