Yes, it’s the summer of sandwiches, strawberries and sumac, which is all delightful, but it’s also been the summer of flies. We always end up with flies in the house in the summer but this year it’s been crazy. We can’t figure out where they’re getting in although our house probably has lots of entry points, we’re not an imperviously sealed kind of structure.
I googled furiously and asked others if they were having this problem. Most people shrugged and said no. Sadly, we didn’t have any antique glass fly catchers left. I always had a soft spot for those. We bought a really wonderful 19th century engraved one at one of the Nashville shows. We brought it to a Pheasant Run show it sold several times over, moving from one dealer to another.
Without a antique glass one, I created a homemade fly trap out of a small milk jug, some water, sugar, strawberries that had gone mushy and some cider vinegar. It worked pretty well but the flies seemed to be by every window so I ordered a couple of similar flay traps with pre-made mixture to put in them. These worked ok but started smelling like dead bodies very quickly. My homemade mixture worked just as well and still doesn’t smell.
I was still feeling frustrated with the flies so I ordered some sticky hanging things and also got some sticky clear strips which you put on the window. Well, we have a winner.
My homemade version is the runner up however!
Onward.
The picture at the top is our bathroom window about 24 hours after putting the little sticky thing up.
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