Do you need to get rid of some flies? I did. Wrote a song about it; like to hear it, here it go.
A few weeks ago I started noticing random posts on my social media platforms about the aggressive amount of flies in the Washington, D.C. area. While I wanted to scream at them all that they don’t my life, it turns out they did. It was like a non-socially distant fly convention (of the insect variety, not the apparel, swag variety) had landed in D.C. and the social committee sent all the flies to the clubs in my neighborhood in southeast D.C. for the afterparties.
Seriously, every time I went into my backyard, I’d see what felt like an overabundance of fly homies, just being all unnecessarily present and accounted for. And no, my family is not nasty—we take the trash out, and because I noticed a number of flies, I’ve tried various options to kill them, or at the very least deter them from my particular property. These flies, though, are just built different. I sprayed my yard with insecticides and all types of recommended shit. Nothing worked.
Well, my wife is mad pregnant right now which means we had a social-distance baby shower planned in our backyard, which was very exciting except we had to get rid of the flies. Like I said, I got to spraying the yard and we had citronella candles and nothing was working. The day before the shower I went to Lowe’s looking for options. My daughter recommended a zapper but I came across some plastic green bottle fly traps from the Rescue! brand. I’d never heard of it before but I also haven’t spent much time trying to quell a fly insurrection in my backyard. I got two of the traps and came home.
The instructions are to fill the traps (plastic jars) with water and then drop a dissolving pouch of some shit that basically acts like catnip for flies inside of them. In my head, it smelled like whatever type of cognac flies like most. You close the lid and then open the club doors, which is this pull out trap looking thing at the top. It takes a few hours for the traps to really get working, so I did the deed and put them outside.
The night before the shower was pretty cool outside so when I went outside to check the traps were empty. It warmed up quickly and then all of a sudden, fucking flies were all up that in that thing. And dying. Quickly. It was like somebody was shooting a music video for flies and the shit attracting them was free money. My wife was like, “yo, we need more of these...look at the damn flies coming for them!” I agreed and went and bought out all the joints I could find at Lowe’s.
As it turns out, the day of the shower, the flies were aplenty. They came from near and far and we had food and sweet, sweet spirits outside. There were flies all over. We made it through and we may have killed enough to not ruin the fun. But let me tell you, the next few days, though.
Fam.
So I had a total of 7 traps in my backyard and the day after the shower, I went outside and saw a disgusting site: it looked like a few THOUSAND flies had died inside ONE of the traps. And this is like a good and bad thing. On the upside, the fucking fly traps work. On the bad side, we did not have thousands of flies in my backyard and all of sudden all the fly homies were coming to my spot to pick a club and die. All of the traps were overflowing with flies.
I’m not a fly conspiracy theorist but I think the flies told all the other fly homies that there was a spot in Southeast D.C. that was giving out free money and Henny. Nothing else explains the sheer volume of flies that all of a sudden descended upon my backyard. And sure, they were all going to the traps, but fuck man, they were all coming for my traps. I feel like I might have rid the neighborhood of flies because each of my 7 traps was INUNDATED WITH DEAD FLIES.
There were so many flies in the traps that flies were crawling OUT of them to die on my driveway. And this also presented me with another problem: how the fuck was I going to dispose of them? I watched videos and they all just said “dispose of them.” Thing is, the traps were supposed to be reusable, but I don’t know where to pour out thousands of dead flies. They for damn sure weren’t going in my house to be flushed. Also, I’m not sure the makers of the Rescue! Outdoor Fly Traps (I also have some disposable joints) envisioned THIS many flies. I basically had to take the fly traps, close the little trap door lid thing and dump them all into an extra-strength trash bag. There was no other way. That part right there is my only real issue with the traps; they worked too good, so good, that the only way to get rid of the dead flies was to throw the whole damn trap out. Granted, the traps aren’t super expensive ($6.27 per trap at Home Depot) but still, them shits said “reusable.” I scoff at that shit.
I did learn something though. Clearly you have to find a place to put the traps where you want the flies to go and die and that should be away from where you might be. I was trying to meet the flies where they were—in my way. But because the traps attract them, they pull them towards wherever you put the traps. Now, I have a few sitting near my trash cans outside, but far away from my house. I can say, undoubtedly, while there are clearly a few anti-social flies who don’t enjoy clubbing that have annoyed me on my deck, the rest of the flies are dying in those traps. I just wish I could find a way to only kill MY flies and not invite other flies because per my experience, these traps work well.
So, if you need some help because you have too many flies in your space, Rescue! Outdoor Fly Traps work well. Highly recommended. Just keep them shits far away from where you intend to sit and chill. Also, be prepared to see more flies than you ever expected. Shit’s disgusting but they’re all dead. Which is #goals.