invasion of the fruit flies

two or three weeks ago, one of my roommates had enjoyed a bottle of wine at our house. afterwards, she (or he!) left the finished bottle of wine on our kitchen counter. after a while, our kitchen was infested with a horde of fruit flies crowding around the empty wine bottle. at first, i chose to ignore them. can't all of us creatures live in peace? i thought we could. that is, until they decided to move into my last loaf of zingerman's bread.

my initial strategy was the simple hand clapping tactic. killing them by hand was a fairly simple affair for a shanghai-trained mosquito killer such as myself. the timing was a bit different since they are slower moving than mosquitoes, but i quickly racked up a total of 20+ kills. unfortunately, it was apparent that i had hardly made a dent in the fruit fly population.

strategy #2 was my roommate's idea of putting aluminum foil over a container filled with alcohol. then holes were punched into the foil with the idea that they would be able to go in, but would be unable to get out. unfortunately, this strategy proved futile as they were able to get both in and out of the holes.

finally, i did a bit of research on the matter of fruit flies and learned to add some soap into the liquid bait (juice and kahlua worked well). the soap will decrease the surface tension of the liquid and then the little flies fall right in and drown. so that's the trap i'm currently using and it seems to have done the trick. now you too know what to do with an infestation of fruit flies.

in other news... i have a new friend! her name is sippycup and she's a cutie. only she kinda looks like a dog.