Mother's column – Clapping my hands against the fruit fly
Drosophila. Photo Wikipedia, André Karwath aka Aka
Christian Life
Once, a spider in my house wove its web in our fruit bowl, between a banana with brown spots, a wrinkled peach and an old bunch of grapes. Smart, because I am sure it is easier to catch flies there than on the spot between two walls and a ceiling.
Nowadays, we consume fruit so fast that it does not even have a chance of becoming overripe. But on summer days, they sometimes enter the kitchen: fruit flies. While in secondary school, we brought them up ourselves, brown ones and black ones, with long wings and with short wings. In the meantime, we learned everything about the laws of genetics. But what I remember especially from those classes is the creature's official name: drosophila — a very dashing name for such an ugly, annoying fly.
Your own fault
"It is your own fault when you have fruit flies in your home", a regional newspaper headline reads, not very empathetically. The editors have even found two pest controllers to talk about this very actual topic in silly time. Their most important tips? Throw out waste and food rests immediately, rinse bottles and jars on the counter well, put your dishcloth in the laundry on time and store vegetables and fruit in the refrigerator. And if you don't? Then it is your own fault if the drosophila conquers your kitchen.
The article mentions a few home remedies people use to trap flies. However, the pest controllers doubt their effectiveness – which is not strange because the means would make them useless. "You can capture a few", experts say, "but that does not solve the problem." Because "one female can lay even four to nine hundred eggs a time." It does not say how much time she needs for that, but the prospect of hundreds of flies above my counter is not very attractive anyway.
Clapping my hands
Thus, I faithfully throw my dishcloth in the laundry, put used bowls in the dishwasher, and try not to leave food on the counter.
And when a drosophila accidentally shows up in my kitchen, I clap my hands unmercifully. Spot on! And that would be no use? This fly might be on the verge of laying her eggs. Then, I gloriously prevented the birth of hundreds of flies in one hit.
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