Fruit flies and the pursuit of justice

Tonight my dear husband and I are fighting the good fight against an invasion of fruit flies. They have invaded yet again this year. But they are early. This time they invited themselves in via the peck or so of apples I plucked from our apple tree. Unfortunately, my best laid plans to reduce them to applesauce did not happen in a timely fashion and in the process of becoming overly ripe in a basket on my kitchen counter, put off the irresitable scent of cider.

Cider is apparently a fruit fly's favorite beverage and they came in droves. But they got tired of sucking on apple juice and started visiting other parts of the kitchen and house. There is nothing more annoying to me than sitting and knitting on a hat or sock while watching Law and Order on the tube and reaching over to take a sip of wine only to find two or there of the little buggers doing the breast stroke in my glass.

So tonight the overly ripe apples took a trip out the back door to visit the carnivorous hens and I made fruit fly traps.

I snipped a hole in the bottom of a coffee filter (the triangular type) and stuffed it into a small mason jar with about an inch of cider vinegar in the bottom. I secure the coffee filter with a rubber band (saved from a bunch of broccoli). We will change out the jars daily until the population is adequately reduced to something far less annoying.

Hopefully it will only take a couple of days. I made two jars and in the last five minutes both have almost pulled in 50 plus bugs. Later in the fall, when they cut the farm fields we will be battling grain moths and mice.