The weather has finally warmed up here and now there plenty of super annoying houseflies. They’re way to fast to swat and have an annoying habit of landing on you.
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
I’m up for trying anything, please make suggestions!
Edit: Thank you to all for your suggestions. So far I’ve tried the idea of spraying them with surface cleaner which appears to work well
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I roast em with a blow torch
Get a dish towel wet and use that to swat at the fly. The weight of the water and the extra length of the towel let’s you get it going faster than the fly can react.
I have a BUG-A-SALT that attached a laser sight on. It can take out a fly from a few feet away. And it makes it fun.
fellow bug-a-salt owner here. can confirm this works great and makes it fun.
now tell me amore bout this laser sight?
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought this method was only geared for fruit flies, not houseflys.
Flypaper strips can be effective depending on the severity and location of the issue and are fairly cheap. It won’t be 100% effective, but it might help. Just be very careful about where you place it if you have any pets or children.
Fly paper strips are the way to go
Play wildly upbeat frantic fly punk music and when they’re all worn out from shaking their little fly asses - nab 'em.
Vacuum cleaner with a wand or a powerful portable vac. You just get the nozzle near the fly and they get sucked in.
I bought a couple of these for around the house. https://a.co/d/5vjsVs3 Works very well but mostly at night.
Also to make sure you regularly do the dishes, take out trash and clean up any food sources for the flies. After using the above and doing the above, mine went from insanity to maybe 1 or 2 around the house in about a week or two.
My cats take care of most of them.
If you want to swat them, you need to move your hand slowly at first. They seem to not notice or care if you move slowly and don’t cast a shadow over them as that will frighten them. I use these same techniques for macrophotography, and it works, but you have to be patient.
I could also recommend getting good at snaping towels. Once you get good at it and you can judge distances, you can hit flies mid-flight.
Or if you just want to buy something and have 50ish bucks to spend you can get this
Invest in venus flytraps. They’re very loyal pets.
Get a used spray bottle, one that you can adjust the spray to be narrow or wide angled by screwing unscrewing the cap. Set it to wide angled. Fill the bottle with some water and cleaning solution. Something you wouldn’t mind being sprayed about. Surface cleaner is a good bet because you probably already have that around the house to clean with.
Creep up on a fly with this diluted concoction and let rip. It might try and fly away but the wide angled spray plus the slight stickiness of the solution will hamper it’s efforts. Watch as it falls to the floor and writhes about in agony as it desperately tries to breathe (flies breathe through their skin which is now clogged with cleaning solution). It’s wings will be useless now too as they’ll be weighed down by the solution.
Finally with some tissues mop up and squash the little shit. For the first several flies leave them where you let them die as a warning to other flies in the area. After a couple of days you can clean up the bodies.
You’re welcome 🤗.
We got one of those electric fly swatters, but the thing is too heavy to swing fast enough to pop flies like you’d want. So on a hunch, I checked YouTube for a trick to make them more effective.
Basically take a styrofoam plate with a little food on it and tape it to the fly swatter, and zip tie the switch down and set it wherever the flies are at their worst. For bait, I just put a smear of ketchup and ranch dressing on a paper towel.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tDZb2l2A888
We managed to kill over 30 flies in about 2 days. Heads up though, they’re not designed to be left continuously powered on, the batteries will end up dead and leaking after a couple days.
I had to toss the batteries and open up the swatter handle to clean out the battery juice off of the terminals so it won’t rot out.
But hey, aside from the inconvenience with the batteries, the trick just freaking works 👍
I’ve been using these for mossies for years, I know it’s not the friendliest of routes but they are not exactly friends either.
