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Homemade Fly Killer
Name: Pam
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
What is a great homemade recipe for killing flies in the
yard and house without endangering birds, dogs and cats? (we have many
(flies, dogs, cats and birds, that is!!!!)
Replies:
Your best bet is one of the variants of traps. For example, the hanging
strips of fly paper seem to stick a good number of flies. I have yet to
see a bird dumb enough to run into and get stuck on one. Some of the funnel
like traps (I've seen some for beetles, and yellow jackets) would likely
work too if you stuck something attractive to flies inside. What you would
do with captured flies, I'm not sure, but you definitely wouldn't want to
leave it too long, if you put some real piece of food exposed inside as
bait they would lay eggs on it, which would hatch as maggots, etc. There
are ways to have the bait protected from any eggs (in a compartment
screened off, for example). Then you could dunk the trap in water and
leave it until they all died, or under an inverted bucket in a puddle of
water with a lit candle, which would consume all the air and eventually
choke them. You could just let them starve or dehydrate by leaving them in
the trap, although that would take a while. The kids you teach maybe could
think of other ways to kill them off without using toxic chemicals. Most
of them would either be something mechanical (release into the blades of a
high speed fan would be a little messy, but effective), or denial of the
basics of life (air, water, food).
Don
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Update: June 2012
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