Every Thursday I travel to see Anthony in Kissimmee. Kissimmee is approximately 45 minutes away by train from the town I live in. I am unable to drive currently because I never got the chance to get my license. I think a lot of this was honestly due to pure laziness (Boo me)!
Here is the process I take to get to Kissimmee every Thursday:
3:15 PM - Get off of work and walk 2 miles to the bus stop
3:45 PM - Arive at bus stop and wait 45 minutes for the bus to arrive
4:30 PM - Get on the bus and ride to Lakeland for 30 minutes
5:00 PM - Walk one block to the train station and wait for the train, (this can be anywhere between 55 minutes to 3 hours)
5:55 PM - Get on train and ride 45 minutes
6:40 PM - Arrive at Kissimmee train station and wait for Anthony for about 10 minutes
6:50 PM - Get in car with Anthony and drive to his house about 20 minutes away
7:10 PM - Finally reach destionation of Anthony's house
I stay in Kissimmee until Sunday when I go back to Bartow to start a new work week. Every Thursday, its lather, rinse, repeat, and I wouldn't have it any other way.... Well I would much rather we live together, but in the mean time this is just fine :]
This past weekend when I was in Kissimmee, my not so terrific room mates decided it was a fabulous idea to leave rotting food in the sink and trash for several days! I am not really sure how many days the food was left there but it looked to me as though they put it there Thursday and did not touch it until Monday. On Sunday night when I came home, I had all ready eaten so I went straight to my room and did not bother much with the kitchen. I did notice a few fruit flies in my bed room. It started with one, then two, then three. I kept killing them but I never could seem to kill them all, I am starting to think there maybe about 20 in there.
The next day (Monday), when I came home from work, the trash had been taken out but the dishes not done. And in the kitchen...... A SWARM OF FRUIT FLIES!
There were what I originally thought was about 50, then I realized it was more like 200. I swear I am not an uncleanly person, I just refuse to clean up after grown adults, and my two room mates tend to make huge messes and not clean up after themselves, thus my currently dirty house.
My good camera was out of batteries so I was forced to use my crappy cell phone to take these pics., making it hard to capture just how many flies there were due to the lack of a macro setting.
Look closely at the pot and you will see four flies in just that one corner, there were actually a lot more but I could not get a picture with them all. (Yes my roommates tend to burn stuff all the time).
Andddd they even made it into the refrigerator! Where they died :]
Not knowing what to do, I consulted my good friend Bing.com (yes I'm a Bing person, even though I use Google for Email). I found a few sites with information on fruit flies. They all first and foremost sugested that you clean your house and get rid of all open food scorces to elimenate the breeding that may still be taking place. Unfortuanly, I could not do this as if I did my roommates would just add more food scorces in a matter of hours. So I went on to plan B: make traps. There were a few differant types of traps that were listed, I tried two.
Trap #1: The Vinegar Trap
This trap was made by pouring 1/4 cup of vingar into a cup and adding a little fruit scented dish soap, then filling the cup with water, creatinf bubbles. You then are supposed to place the trap on the counter and..... wait. The flies are atracted to the vinegar and the fruit smell and they will go into the cup but will then drown becasuse the soap will not allow them to fly back out. A few minutes after setting this trap out I all ready saw some flies get caught in it. Unfortunatly a few hours after I went to bed, my room mates dumped it out, so I am not sure just how many flies it caught, and I was unable to get a picture as well.
Trap #2: The Orange Trap
The trap was made by pouring a little bit or orange juice into a cup and then covering the cup with a sandwich baggie that had the corner cut off. The flies, attracted to the fruit smell should fly into the trap but not be able to fly back out. My room mates didn't seem to mess with this one, nor did the flies. Two days have gone by and it it has successfully caught nothing.
The Orange Trap. I squeezed an orange in there because I didn't have any orange juice on hand.
The major problem with having a fruit fly infestation in your house is that if its bad enough (mine definitely was) you can not cook or eat in your house because the flies will land in your food. EWE! who wants to eat flies?!?! I plan to call Orkin next week to exterminate any and all bugs I have in my apartment (don't get me started on the roaches and fleas). I figured I would just try my hardest to get rid of them on my own in the meantime.
I have found that if I fan my food while in my room where there is not as many flies, I am able to eat in there with little to no issues. Not being able to cook, has however cause a major issue for me. On the first day of having this fly problem I decided not to cook at all and to just take cold foods to work for lunch.
My lunch: 3 Hotdogs and about 4 oz of cheese the orange one is cheddar and the while is habanero white cheddar. Being pregnant has caused to want LOTS of cheese all the time. Note to self: habanero cheese is no good when you have heartburn!
On day two, I had a brilliant idea: maybe if I cook in the oven (where there are no flies) I can manage to cook a meal without getting flies in it. Every week I make weekly menus to keep myself on track (I really am a creature of habit). On the menu for that day was hamburgers, and since I did not have bread they were " mini biscuit burgers". Biscuits are cooking in the oven, so that was no problem, burgers however... I typically cook on the stove. Not this time! I threw those little buggers on a cookie sheet and popped them in the oven, and it worked!
My meal shown below, biscuit burgers and canned carrots. And yes of coarse my burgers had a TON of cheese on them :] These were definitely nothing to rave about but they worked out in a pinch.
I was able to eat the whole meal in my bedroom, without consuming any flies. One fly did decide to take a swim in my milk though. GROSS! but hey, one fly isn't all that bad for the amount I have swarming in my house right now.
So what am I going to do for the rest of the two weeks until Orkin comes? I have no earthly clue. I suppose I will just take it one day at a time for now.
