Catching Flies, Part 2

This morning when I got to work I decided to build a fruit fly trap that would hopefully work better than simply setting out a bottle of malt vinegar. Incidentally, the lid full of vinegar worked better than I thought it would. When I dumped it out, I found there were almost a dozen fruit flies that had gotten into it and sunk to the bottom. It turns out that bottle of vinegar also had some liquid dish soap added, which I heard from several places helps in its trapping ability. Apparently the soap breaks the vinegar's surface tension, making it so the fly would actually sink in rather than be able to sit on the top and fly away to safety.

But the downside of something like that is that it still primarily just attracts the flies, and doesn't really trap them. It's only the few that are foolish enough to go right up to the vinegar that meet their demise. Hence the reason for a trap. I grabbed a disposable plastic cup from the closet at the office, then poured a bit of the vinegar/soap mix into it. Next I took a piece of card stock from my recycling box, cut a rough semi-circle from it, then rolled and taped it into a cone shape. After cutting the tip of the cone off, I put it into the cup and put tape around the edge to both hold it on the cup and make sure it was sealed. The important thing is that the only way in or out was through the hole in the cone.

And it worked great! It seems that after the flies are attracted into the trap thanks to the vinegar (I've heard that apple cider vinegar works best though—I'll have to bring some in tomorrow morning) they are simply too stupid to exit through that same hole they entered through. Seriously, throughout the day I watched several of them crawling around the cone inside the cup and go right up to the hole—then turn around and head back the other way. Eventually they either fall into the vinegar or try to land on it. Even if they didn't, they still would be stuck inside the cup rather than flying around annoying me.

At the end of my work day I picked the cup up and looked inside, and counted 35 flies that I could see. Since I could only see what was around the edges of the cup due to the dark malt vinegar, I'm sure there were more in there that I didn't notice so I've been assuming there were around 40. 40 fruit flies trapped, after only 8 hours. In comparison, the filled cap only trapped about a dozen, in 16 hours. Triple the kill count in half the time. Not bad! I wonder what it'll be like when I get back to work in the morning...

Catching Flies with Vinegar

There's an old expression, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Not true; I tried it.

I've had a bit of a problem with fruit flies around my desk at work lately, and even have my bananas inside a storage container to keep them away. This afternoon I noticed the container had a couple dozen fruit flies crawling all over it. They couldn't get inside at the bananas, but that didn't stop them from congregating there anyway.

One of the guys at work recently dubbed an old bottle of vinegar to be a “Fly Trap” bottle so I opened it and sat it on top of my banana box. Then, remembering that expression, I grabbed a plate, smeared some honey on it, and set it up next to the vinegar. Well what do you know, after several minutes there were flies all over the bottle, and only one crawling on the plate (and it wasn't anywhere near where the honey was).

It would appear that whoever first came up with that expression had no idea what they were talking about.

But attracting flies and catching flies are two different matters. It doesn't seem like simply setting out vinegar will actually catch them, and it'll need to be just part of the bait in some other sort of trap. I poured some vinegar into the bottle's lid and, while lots of flies were crawling on it, none actually ventured into the vinegar itself where they would drown. So now I'm worried that, tomorrow morning, I'll have a really massive infestation around my desk thanks to the vinegar. Fortunately I've found several promising fruit fly trap ideas online that I'll have to give a try in the morning...

The 70s Come to Korea

I just stumbled across the song and music video “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper Psy. I enjoy watching Japanese music videos because some of them are quite... creative. And Korean stuff can come close. I watched this video several times, not only because I found the song catchy, but because I got a good laugh from both his dance moves and the suits he wore in the video.

Once suit in particular seemed very familiar. Well what do you know, that appears to be almost identical to the tuxes that my dad and his wedding party wore. Back in the mid-70s. I guess it's true what they say about fashion, how everything comes back in style eventually.