Fruit fly infestation

There were only a few to begin with, maybe four or five that I had noticed. I've had fruit flies in the past, but not to such a severe extent as I have these past several weeks. Even after removing any remnants of food that may have been keeping the population afloat, they stopped at nothing to reproduce and before I knew it, literally hundreds of fruit flies had infested my kitchen. And because I'm living in a studio apartment, my kitchen is also almost every other room in my apartment.

The threat was now greater than I could have ever anticipated. I no longer felt that my kitchen was sanitary, and sitting idly was not helping, even though it has always worked in the past when dealing with fruit flies. They kept multiplying. At first I used regular old cleaning spray to stave the infestation but with lackluster results. Sure it killed scores of them, but it wasn't enough. I brought home some more lethal cleaning spray from work, but this also made little difference. The population would go into hiding until the chemical raids subsided.

I was going to have to outsmart them.

In the photo you see above are a series of traps I devised to destroy the scourge. I made about eight of these and they all worked quite effectively. For anyone who finds themselves similarly in the midst of a fruit fly pestilence, here is what you can do:

• Fold a piece of paper into a conical shape and then tape the sides so it doesn't unravel. Make sure you leave a little opening at the tip. Or, when you're finished taping the sides, simply cut a small hole at the tip - big enough for fruit flies to crawl into. It's important that this hole is quite small.
• Pour a small amount of balsamic vinegar into a glass. These bastards love the smell - and I have grown to hate it now that its smell reminds me of hellish hordes of fruit flies.
• Place the conical paper into the glass as you see in the photos above. Make sure the tip comes down close to the vinegar, but far enough away so that it doesn't touch. Maybe a couple of centimeters or so.
• Tape the outside where the papers extends out of the glass so no fruit flies can escape out the sides.
• The flies will be attracted to the smell of the vinegar, go down the paper and into the glass. Yet the fools are too stupid to figure out how to escape. They'll eventually starve or will fly into the vinegar and drown. But not before covering the paper with disgusting fly droppings.

There you have it. The fruit fly population is all but destroyed save for a few individuals who cling to their lives in spite of imminent doom inside the traps.