Lord of the fruit flies

There’s been a lot of press lately about the sudden appearance of murder hornets in our country. Not to belittle that issue, but in our house, I’ve had to do battle with stink bugs, cave crickets and little children, so I know a thing or two about dealing with pests. But my problem this week was neither murder hornets or stink bugs or jitter bugs or bugs that are snug in a rug.

I had a problem with fruit flies. This is not the first time we have had an issue with fruit flies. In the past, the culprit has usually been a bunch of bananas that had begun to turn. When I noticed the fruit flies around the bananas, I would throw out the bananas, and then, voila, no more fruit flies. This time, however, tossing the bananas did not solve the problem. Throwing out the garbage with the bananas did not solve the problem. For some reason, the fruit flies were lingering and even though we had no bananas, we still had fruit flies. Lots of them. And it was making me bananas.

When I consulted my handy-dandy pest management guru ( the internet), I discovered that female fruit flies can lay up to 500 eggs in a lifetime. I’m not particularly good at math, but even I know that a lot of breeding fruit flies, times a 10- day period, equals a lot more fruit flies.

“These fruit flies are driving me nuts,” I complained to my husband as I swatted at one buzzing near my head.

He looked around. “What fruit flies?”

“Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed. “They’re everywhere. Don’t you see them?”

“No,” he responded. “Hey, where are all the bananas?”

“You don’t see a million fruit flies, but you noticed that the bananas are gone?” I asked incredulously.

“I don’t want to eat the fruit flies. I want to eat the bananas.”

I sighed. “Could you please just help me with the fruit flies?” “What fruit flies?”

I glared at him and picked up the phone to call a pest control company we had used in the past. Clearly this fruit fly issue was going to be mine to resolve.

“Hi, this is Tracy Beckerman. Can you tell me what I need to do to get rid of fruit flies?” “Throw out your bananas.” “Yeah I did that.”

“Clean out the trash can and garbage disposal.”

“Did that already, too,” I said. “Check around for any other rotting fruit or vegetables.”

I looked at my husband sitting on the sofa. “Do couch potatoes count?”

“And put out some wine.” “Wine?” I repeated.

“Yeah, red wine works best.” I shook my head. “You want me to serve them wine? I want them to leave: I don’t want them to stay. You want me to serve them some appetizers, too?”

After the pest control guy explained to me how to catch the fruit flies with the wine, I hung up.

“They want me to put out wine for the fruit flies,” I said to my husband.

“Really?” he said with sudden interest. “Hey, can I have a glass of wine too?”

I looked at him skeptically. “What wine?”