Fruit Flies Are Invading Birmingham Alabama Homes!

Travis McGowin
Did you survive the holidays?

Michael Wienecke
I did. I did

Travis McGowin
unscathed. No issues, no, no pests, no family issues. You had a good Thanksgiving?

Michael Wienecke
No, a lot. You know, we wouldn’t be on this podcast. We weren’t talking about some kind of pest. Kind of pest issue. And yeah, unfortunately, at my home, I had a pest issue that popped up the day before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t fun. So we had fruit flies all throughout the house. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today, because as on as we’ve always talked about on this podcast, we talk about things that we see at customers house, at customers houses, and just so happens that I’m the the one that has them. Well, thank

Travis McGowin
you for being the guinea pig for today’s episode, but realistically so we just got through with thanksgiving. We’re diving straight off into the Christmas season. If your family is like mine. More specifically, if your spouse is like mine, you’ve had Christmas up since before Thanksgiving. Uh, so you’re knee deep in the holidays. And of course, along with that, brings the inevitable family get togethers where you know you may have a family get together that’s two weeks before two weeks after the holiday. Uh, everyone’s got a lot going on. And it’s so easy to go to the store buy the food that you need to cook fruits, vegetables, everything in between, and then forget about it and let it sit. And then Michael tell us what happens. Well,

Michael Wienecke
it’s funny because, you know, searching around the whole house trying to figure out what it is. Because, you know, obviously Travis, obviously Travis we’ve seen, I can’t even count how many fruit fly issues we’ve had or seen at customers houses. Jim searching around the kitchen trying to find where this issue is. I know it’s either something rotted or, you know, something that’s been out, like you said, overnight, or something like that. Well, between two stacks of paper was a banana, and it was very black, very, very black. So that was, that was the source. Got that removed, cleaned up, and, you know, and we’ll talk more about it, but we went into the treatment phase and got it pretty much eliminated that day, right before, I think, dinner time with my family for Thanksgiving. So it worked out pretty

Travis McGowin
well, right? And you know, some fruits, some vegetables, last longer than others based upon their storage, whether they’re on the counter, whether they’re in a cool, dark place, like maybe the bottom of a pantry, but inevitably, like I said, at some point you’re either going to forget that it’s there, you’re going to use what you need and put it back, and then, you know, it just sits too long, and it starts to, you know, maybe get a little too ripe, or even ferment or rot or something like that. And then somehow or another, they always find it, like they always the fruit flies will always find it. And then that’s when your problem starts. They start to colonize in that fermenting, decaying fruit or vegetables, or whatever it is you’ve left out that’s starting to get really gross.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and I hate to say this, but I blame the grocery stores, obviously, because you’ve got, you know, massive, massive amounts of vegetables and fruits. And where do they come from? Travis, where do these flies come from? So how do they get on these fruits? They

Travis McGowin
fly not out of thin air. They don’t just show up in your house out of thin air, that’s for sure. So they probably really fall into that category, very similar to a lot of other pests that are invited pests, because they don’t just occur naturally in your house. They’re usually brought in. So you know, if you had bananas sitting there on a shelf at a grocery store with just a huge stack of bananas, and the stock didn’t get rotated properly. And there’s definitely a chance that you could end up with some larva or something like that on what you bring home, and it wouldn’t be an issue normally, until you don’t actually finish the food before it gets too ripe or starts to, you know, spoil,

Michael Wienecke
right? I mean, you know, it’s coming from the grocery store, it’s already there in the food and it’s just sitting there, and as it ferments, it’s going to start, start popping into a big issue. So, and the the easiest way to control it is just getting it in time, kind of like I did remove that banana, you know, took it outside, threw it in the trash can. I have, I’m able to do a treatment, obviously. So I phoned all my drains, I did, you know, sanitization, to get rid of that problem. But really, just removing that banana, over time, the adults would have died, right?

Travis McGowin
But let’s be clear just how fast it can actually spiral out of control. Oh, yeah, you know, from start to finish, and we’ll do the breakdown of of what happens over the course of this amount of time. But in roughly 10 days, you can have a massive infestation if you if you don’t handle it early on, right?

Michael Wienecke
I. Seen them in every room of a house before. So, yeah, if you don’t get it very quickly, I mean, they, you know, they can have up to 500 500 eggs,

Travis McGowin
and that’s per adult, right? Per adult. Female laying eggs can lay up to 500 in their very short life span, per

Michael Wienecke
adult, yep. So if you let it go and go it. It is catastrophic,

Travis McGowin
right? So, so we’ve, I know we’ve kind of alluded to this already, but you know, if you, if you find that you have fruit flies, they’re becoming a problem. You’re seeing one two, and then more and more and more over, over the course of maybe, you know, five days to seven days a week, and then you end up taking the you take the the tour, the inevitable tour around your house, in your kitchen, trying to hunt through, apparently, stacks of paper where you have a banana hidden, or, I

Michael Wienecke
also have two children,

Travis McGowin
no excuses, yes, yes. But you take that tour and you’re looking through your pantry. I mean, even sometimes your refrigerator can be an issue too. You know, you take that tour and you find it and you throw it out. What do you do with what’s left? What do you do with the remnants that are still flying around?

Michael Wienecke
So, as a homeowner doing it themselves, they can build a trap with vinegar and a little bit of soap they go down and they get trapped in that. So you’re going to get rid of the the adults, and then again, that life cycle. As long as you’re cutting that life cycle off, then you shouldn’t have a problem. Now, again, when you have 1000s of fruit flies flying around the house, it’s a little harder to control it with just those little traps due to the fact that they are nuisance. They’re in your eyes, they’re in your nose, they’re in your ears, that kind of thing. So that’s when I would highly recommend, you know, a professional coming out and taking care of

Travis McGowin
it well. And you know, just for, just for referencing and mentioning, we actually had, it wasn’t fruit flies, but we actually ended up with a bit of a fly problem. Thanksgiving Day, we were cooking outside, frying a turkey coming in and out of the house. And by that night, we actually looked up on the ceiling, and they were actual house flies on our ceiling. So the next day, my youngest son decided it’d be fun to take our floss water, which we don’t have a traditional flash water. We’re too bougie for that. We have the electric you have an electric one. Yeah, it looks like a tennis racket. And I think his kill count for flies was like 21 flies by the time he got done. And he had a blast and entertained him for hours. So if you’re looking for a good Christmas gift for somebody, and you’ve got a fruit fly problem, a rotten banana, and, yeah, get them a rotten banana. Take it to their house. I’m just kidding. Don’t do this, but take it to their house. Get them one of the electric fly swatters that looks like the tennis racket. Hours of fun when it zaps those flies and you see, like the little spark come off of it, there’s nothing really more satisfying. That’s, I mean, that’s just my opinion. I even got in on the kill count a little bit. I killed a couple that he couldn’t reach so, but good fun for the whole family, right? And an instant knock down when you’re knocking them out of the air.

Michael Wienecke
I like the gun. I like the gun that shoots the salt. That’s what I like.

Travis McGowin
But see, that’s a little messy for me. I don’t want little granules assault all over the house either. True. Yeah. Anyway. Well, hopefully everyone listening had a great Thanksgiving, and hopefully you have a very Merry Christmas as we approach into the deep holiday season before New Year’s and the cold and the cold, thank God.

Michael Wienecke
Well, thanks for listening. You.

Visit our YouTube Channel! Click Here!

Learn more about our pest control services! Click Here!

The post Fruit Flies Are Invading Birmingham Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.