Those pesky fruit flies

Where's my beach towel?

We have been inundated with those pesky little fruit flies that are coming from somewhere in our new kitchen. We never had any of these before, so I'm wondering if it could be our compost bin. We started keeping one in the kitchen after we got a composter for the community garden. Whatever the reason, one of my blogging friends, Kay over at Musings, put a tip in a blog post a while back about how to deal with these little buggers. You just put a little apple cider vinegar into a container and put a drop of dish soap in. It works like a charm! The flies are attracted to the smell, dive in and promptly drown, since the dish soap breaks the surface tension of the vinegar.

What you can't see in the picture is that there are plenty of dead flies in the bottom of the container, but why aren't these guys climbing in? Did one of them see George down there on the bottom and put out the alarm to the others? I've noticed that they do seem reluctant to take the plunge, so to speak. But they sure do like that smell. Maybe the trick is to use something glass instead of metal.

I did find this on line, a humane way to catch fruit flies without killing them and giving me a method to catch and release them outside. I don't like to kill things like spiders, but I have a really hard time feeling bad about those little fruit flies drowning. Am I being callous?

My friend Judy and I are going to see the documentary called Searching for Sugar Man today at the Pickford. I'll let you know whether we give it a Thumbs Up. It won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, among others, for the best international documentary, so it must be pretty good. The story is of a musician named Rodriguez (Sugar Man) who became a legend in South Africa because of his music, but no one else had heard of him.

I have one more thing to remind you: please vote, whichever party and whoever you vote for. The privilege of voting is nothing to be taken lightly, and many people around the globe would give anything to have a chance to do so. Here in Washington State, we vote by mail, so my job is done!
:-)