‘Tis fruit fly season again here in the House of Chaos. That glorious miserable time of year when those wee little fuc…buggers ascend from the depths of hell to frolic and make merry in my kitchen. To provide a lil’ extra bit of protein in one’s wine. To exact revenge for that science lesson back in second grade when we studied their life cycles, little cylinders full of annoyances incarcerated above their blue goo sustenance.
This is a particularly fruitful season, as I cannot remember a time when we had this many annoyances in the kitchen. Did they hitch a ride in the CSA peaches? Were they hiding under the trash? Is this the endpoint of a long and wearisome journey through the pipes, rising into my kitchen from the sink? Finding Nemo may have been incorrect; it appears all pipes lead to my kitchen, at least for fruit flies.
I do not know! All I know is that we were gone for nearly two weeks depositing our offspring at their respective colleges and within a day of our return these little airborne chia seeds from hell had taken over the kitchen. Every year it is like this and every year I wage war and every year I fall short in battle. I’ve tried all the traps and tricks and while some work better than others, the only guaranteed solution is a hard freeze. People, I am not ready for a light frost, much less a hard freeze. Mother Nature is trying to ease me into autumn and that bastard winter and I will not go easily into those seasons; I am still trying to get my summer started here.
So with a slight whimper I sigh, lift my paper bag of banana peels high, and once more into the breach go I.
UGH, we’ve been dealing with a particularly bad round of fruit flies here, too, for months now. We don’t get hard freezes here, but they do tend to peter out somehow eventually. I think? I hope? The best I’ve been able to come up with for management is cider vinegar traps, but I’m not convinced it makes much of a difference.