Every year in late summer we have an infestation of fruit flies. They get really bad for about a month and then go away and we don't have any problems until the following year. This year I thought of the tree frogs we have seen in the yard. Frogs eat flies. Problem solved! I told Peyton my plan, and she announced that she already had a captured frog. We put tape across the top of the container so the frog couldn't get out but the fruit flies could still get in.
Then I added a piece of tomato to attract the flies.
Now....we wait.
I took the garbage out a little while later and found another tree frog sitting on top of the garbage bags. I'm sure it is an all you can eat buffet of flies in there. The garbage man was coming in the morning and we didn't want the frog to get hurt, so Pey caught it and added it to our jar. Now we had two soldiers in our war against the fruit flies! In the morning, however, we were down to one soldier and one missing in action. We looked around but didn't find him. When I got home from work that afternoon I found him sitting on the base of my mixer. I caught him and put him back in the garbage can outside where we got him. He should be fine for another week until garbage pick up.
I don't know if the frogs actually ate any fruit flies or not. I did figure out an awesome fly trap though. I used a wide mouth pint jar and put in enough dish soap to cover the bottom. Then I added an equal amount of apple cider vinegar and swished it around until it was well mixed. I used my good vinegar, next time I'll try the cheap stuff.
It worked so well!! Within the hour there were a dozen dead flies in the jar. The scent of vinegar is pretty much gone after a day and it seemed to stop attracting flies, so I dumped it out and made a new batch. 48 hours using this trap and I haven't seen anymore flies. Cheap and easy!!
