we have met the enemy and they are sometimes iridescent

[cimorene]

In the past when flies have been inside our house, it's usually been fruit flies... because of fruit. A couple of years ago one time we had a serious problem with regular house flies that we couldn't seem to completely get rid of, though, and at that time we had a hell of a time looking for flyswatters and flypaper everywhere. Wax's mom looked for them everywhere too and she couldn't find them either! Diligently trying to swat them and attempting to clean anything they could possibly lay eggs in and making homemade fly traps was the best we could do, and it seemed to take forever to get rid of them.

This time they've only been getting on our nerves for the length of the summer, but... once again we have screens in the windows, but the door to the balcony stands open all summer, and there's an extra opportunity for flies, bees, moths and other winged creatures to buzz in. There's really no way to fix this; putting in a screen door wouldn't work because the cats have to be able to come and go from the balcony. Tristana loves it out there. Maybe we need one of those electric bug zapper lanterns hanging in the hall near the balcony door. Or one in every room, at the current rate. Wax has ordered fly paper online. There's got to be a better kind of fly trap than the ones we made last time, which seemed incredibly, frustratingly slow to work.

I'm so tired of scrubbing fly poop off of my beautiful cabinet doors and shelf edges! And it's so enraging to be sleepily making a morning pot of tea and be confronted with flies on the handle you're reaching for, or perching on the stove hood, or trying to fly up your nose!

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Maybe you could do a screen door on the balcony and put a cat door in it. That's what my sister did for the balcony door for her dogs. The dog door is a plastic flap, not screen.

[cimorene]

I thought about this a bit but it's not architecturally practical - there are already two doors in the doorframe, and we can't take one of them out. We already get too much cold air through there in the winter and we're not strong enough to be casually lifting doors on and off their hinges.

[princessofgeeks]

They are French doors, then? Not sliders?

[cimorene]

Oh, no, one inside the other. Exterior doors are always like that in this climate.

[princessofgeeks]

tnx. and good luck!