Operation Fruitfly Bust: Day 1

So Nonsense and I have been trying some different things with household chores and with arrangement of general stuff around the house. Significant to this post in particular, he took on all the cooking and the dishes, and I took on all other household chores, including, importantly, taking out the garbage.

Now, I don't mind taking out the garbage, but many of you will know how I feel in general about facing the elements, as well as about wasting time. So generally I like to kill two birds with one stone and take out the garbage when I'm actually going out somewhere for some other reason. The problem with this is that I usually either forget to take the garbage when I'm going somewhere, or I'm running late so I don't have time to round up all the bags. What this means is that sometimes our kitchen garbage is full to the point where the lid can't quite cover the top of the bag. And since we like fruits and veggies, what this means is a moderate infestation of fruit flies.

Now, normally this isn't so bad because we would keep the garbage under the sink, so not too many fruit flies end up making their way into the kitchen. Buuuuut, as I mentioned we've been trying some new things with arrangement of stuff. I found that having the kitchen garbage (which is in one of those pails you step on to lift the lid) in the cabinet under the sink reeeaally inconvenient. and I suddenly had a revelation that in fact, it didn't have to be there. So we decided to try it out in the kitchen, against a relatively out-of-the-way wall. Much more convenient. To us, and, unfortunately the fruit flies. What with the detritus of random meals and snacks in the garbage pail, each time we open the lid of our garbage can, about 10 fruit flies catapult up into our faces. We now have a more major infestation, and a few days ago Marcin was seriously pondering putting the garbage back under the sink. With this distasteful threat over my head after having tasted the convenience of having it out where I can actually step on the lever, I realized we'd have to get serious about busting these bugs.

The first thing I did was a bit of online research. Some of the simple, natural, and seemingly intuitive recommendations I've had for both preventing and getting rid of the pests are:

• rinsing fruits and veggies as soon as you buy them. Refrigerating unconsumed produce immediately is also a good tactic (Sadly, common fruit fly harbourers are of course also usually best left out rather than refrigerated. Bananas, tomatoes and peaches are all the worse for wear after the fridge, and around here we -- especially Nonsense, but lately myself also -- are big on fresh flavour.).
• making sure the garbage pail (not just the bag) is kept clean and free of decomposing foodstuffs, since fruit flies' habitat, food source and breeding ground is in fact rotting fruit.
• putting out a jar of apple cider vinegar, with a paper funnel sealing the top so that the fruit flies find their way in to get at the vinegar, and are then trapped inside the jar.
• putting out a ziploc bag of banana, apple, tomato or other fruit chunks with most of its zipper closed but enough open to allow the air and bugs to circulate, and then sealing the flies in or killing them as they come.

One thing I also thought to try was to see if I could prevent access to both the smell of fresh produce and the actual produce itself, by covering up my fruits.

So armed with this new knowledge, I've decided to experiment. I started in the afternoon by taking out all the garbage in the apartment, and thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting the kitchen garbage pail and the lid. I rinsed the bananas I'd bought before putting them out, and when I did, I tried a bunch of different coverings. Sadly, none were big enough to cover a bunch of 6 bananas. However, I did eventually happen upon a combination of two of our metal mixing bowls which, when I broke the banana bunch in two and faced one bunch down across the other, would form what will hopefully be a good enough seal to keep the little vermin out.

Thirdly, I felt the ziploc bag trap would be more practical for me than the jar trap, so I put a banana peel and a few chunks of fruit into a ziploc sandwich bag and zipped it partway (I had to try a few different ways to make sure it stood up enough to allow air to flow in and out. Eventually I stood the bag up between the microwave and espresso machine).

By the end of the night the bagged banana chunks were browning and the fruit flies were definitely interested. The bits of onion and celery in the nearly empty garbage can did not seem to have drawn any flies, nor did the bananas in the bowls. My nefarious plan was working... not yet sure what to do with the bag, and when, but that could wait until morning.