The Battle of the Fruit Flies

So for those of you who are not familiar with my home life, I just recently installed hardwood floors into my house. During the 2 month long process (Lumber Liquidators mills messed up the finish on our wood) our house was a disaster area with our furniture in the garage, a layer of dust that rivaled the Pompeii aftermath, and some kitchen disorganization. One such disorganization centered around a forgotten bunch of onions within one of our kitchen cupboards. Well needless to say I may have forgotten them, but the fruit flies decided to have a rotten-onion orgy within my kitchen.

If you have ever been invaded by an army of fruit flies, then you know how much that sucks. If you have not, then read on, good times ensue. Initially there was a fly here and a fly there and with the summer coming to an end, I just assumed some recon fruit flies were just trying to stake out a place to avoid the approaching autumn death pyre. After a few days I would walk into the kitchen, kill 10 - 15 of these little pesky bastards (which by this time did not seem odd to me) and go about my business. At some point I decided that this must not be the cleanest way to live and went on a hunt for the cause. Much to my surprise I found a nice little bag of rotting onions that served as a maternity ward for an army of fruit flies that would have made Napolean envious. So I immediately dispatched the onions to the trash bin and sterilized the kitchen as best I could.

Two days removed from the sterilization I was sitting down to dinner with one of the last remaining fruit flies and decided to make sure I had done all I could in the Fly-ocide of 2008 (as it has come to be known within my house). I looked within wikipedia (the end-all of trustworthy information) to make sure that there was nothing else I could do, and did not realize that major research is being done in the fruit fly removal studies. Some of it seemed very scientific, and some of it seemed outright evil in its "rip the wings off of a fly" maniacal stylings. I just thought I would share one such entry here:

"Make an oven trap:
Remove all available food from kitchen. Clean the dishes, place open items in ziplock bags or the fridge. Open the door of your oven and place a piece of fruit (banana or kiwi peels) in there overnight. Wake up early the next morning and quietly close the oven door. Turn on the oven to 400ºF/200ºC for about 10-15 minutes and majority of your fruit flies will be gone. Clean the oven thoroughly."

So apparently it needs to be said to clean the oven thoroughly when you are finished. I guess the author did not want to enjoy incinerated fruit fly added to the flavor of their cooking. Needless to say, it was fun and I think I actually heard the screams of a hundred or so flies as they roasted to death.