Every year we have fruit flies as summer turns into fall.  They are a little annoying but if you pick up any food or things that are damp you can usually control the situation.  For the past month we have had an infestation like I have never seen before.  They were everywhere.

I went through everything, cleaning, washing, sanitizing.  We would leave on Sunday night and I would come back on Wednesday, turn up the heat and they would be everywhere.  They weren’t confined to one room either.  Every room downstairs had fruit flies.  The past couple of weeks have been pretty cold so I figured that would do them in – not so.  It felt like black fly season in my living room.

I put out an APB to all of my cyber friends and family.  Some replied with great advice.  I googled how to rid yourself of fruit flies and tried many things suggested.  Two weeks in a row I set out bowls of cider vinegar with a couple of drops of detergent.  It worked quite well, except for the pesky buggers that would hang out on the rim of the bowl like birds on a birdbath.  The bowls were in every room and it seemed like the population grew from week to week.

One morning I was at my wits end with a swarm around my head.  I sat down to think about this – what was keeping them going?  There had to be a food source of some kind for them to continue to multiply like this.  Then it dawned on me – there were potatoes gone bad in a wooden bin in the kitchen.  It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  I had Bill remove their life source and waited another few days.

I am happy to say when I arrived last night I was pleasantly relieved to see they were gone.  Not a one anywhere.

I must admit I took a perverse pleasure in sucking up their dead little carcasses with the vacuum cleaner.