Do you know why they could have invaded so suddenly? The hot wheather? There are about 20 or so and I've only killed 2. It seems like everyday they multiply! Also does anybody have a quick fix to get rid of them?
2007-06-07 08:56:14 · 6 answers · asked by Rachel S 2 in Home & Garden ➔ Other - Home & Garden
Perhaps you have someone there you don't, usually.
2007-06-07 08:58:57 · answer #1 · answered by vanamont7 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
A single fly lays eggs in a location (usually around a window) in your home and when they hatch, you have lots of flies. I use the hang down fly strips from Walmart. They seem to like to land on them.
2007-06-07 16:54:23 · answer #2 · answered by sensible_man 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We had this problem at our one home........we never knew but we had a dead squirrel in the crawl space and hence the flies thought this was great............so, we called in an expert, got rid of the squirrel's body and the flies too.
2007-06-07 16:04:48 · answer #3 · answered by kidlet_animal_luv 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They still sell Fly strips at WalMart. They are seasonal items, so stock up if you need to. If you have birds or pets, make sure the pets can't get into the strips.
Good luck! :)
2007-06-07 15:58:41 · answer #4 · answered by searching_please 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Flies don't find much food in your house. They slowly get weaker and die. Sometimes a fly in my house spends it's last energy trying to get out thru some closed window, I suppose because he can see more sunlight in that direction.
You might get rid of a majority of them by openning something, but then others would come in to look around... If there is a skylight you can open, maybe there are few flies that high outside?
You might try catching a bunch with the hose of a vaccum cleaner. I'd wear a dust mask going into that room.
Unfortunately I know little about repellent scents (maybe there are none for flies, being scavengers), or what convenient scents are attractive, nor whether heat or humidity influence them much.
The typical flying-insect trapping-box has:
- color or lighting to attract from a distance
(You could use a fluorescent lamp in a huge clear plastic bag. Fluorescent tubes make less heat than incandescent bulb, can't melt or ignite the bag.) White light with blue and UV are good, yellowish light is poor.)
- attractive scents or warm air drifting out of a funnel, to lead them into it.
I don't know, maybe bologna grease on a plate under the fluorescent lamp, to make it a little warm.
- the funnel's small end exits somewhere in the center of the volume of the box, because when they want to get out, they look around the perimeters, not in the middle.
When they turn around and look at the entrance, it should look darker, not lighter than the box they are in.
Admittedly, perhaps such a trap is no better than a few square feet of flypaper.
More to the point, you may be able to herd most of them out of one room into another when night comes, so you have at least one room OK or only one room bad. Do this at night by making the sacrificial room light while the room to be cleared is left dark. Try to use bright lamps, maybe two. Halogens are good. Borrow your husband's halogen work-lights. Go into the dark room and agitate every 5 minutes several times to get them moving. Probably difficult to get them to leave a room which smells distinctly good, like a dirty kitchen. Air it all out as well as you can, to suppress smells.
I really doubt your house has much to do with it.
But to clean out the crap smell and other unknown smells, one of those electronic air cleaners would be a good thing now. Preferably a strong one. Give the flies less to find interesting too.
Another trick is to realize that cloying smells stick to surface area.
Accoustic stucco ceilings, and rugs on the floor, have high surface areas. They will have grabbed a load of the fertilizer smell from the air when it was strongest, and will be slower to "dry up" than the great outdoors or your bare walls. Just maybe that's why flies are staying there. I might put out cheap kitty litter, covering about 4 square feet of newspaper in a room, close the doors and drive air in circles with a fan for a few hours. Idea being to maximize transport of the smell from your textured surfaces into the fine pores of the kitty-litter stones. Then see if the flies leave the room voluntarily or sit still less.
Alternatively, making things warm can help to evaporate smells off of them. If the outdoors is fresh already but flies still like your indoors, try running your heater up to 85 for half hour, then turning it off, openning windows, blowing fans thru them.
Temperature's influence on sticking of smells may be why the flies like some surfaces outside your home. Cool, damp surfaces will retain the smell (to the flies, maybe it's a taste) longer after the wave of stink passes. Or maybe the flies just like the warmest or coolest places, or staying out of the sun. You'd have to try to see for yourself what fits. Consider upwind/downwind and wind-sheltered vs breezy too.
If you can find one of those little ultrasonic pest repellers, battery powered, you might put it on the end of a stick and slowly walk around with it to see if they even try to stay 3ft away from it. I don't think it will work, but it's a fine science experiment. And if it does maybe you have a tool.
I think flies are just about smart enough to, if they accidentally fly out a door, turn around and come back in, if the indoors has some advantage they presently want. Usually I am able to learn a little about handling things like this, if I can bear to stand around and play with it.
Perhaps you can too.
2007-06-07 16:15:20 · answer #5 · answered by Corbin S 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
showers
2007-06-07 15:59:03 · answer #6 · answered by JK_JEEP 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋