Flies (Ã la Amityville Horror)
I have no garbage or food in the house but I’ve been sharing my space with big, fat, black, hairy old flies. I think I’ve plugged up all the holes but they’re obviously still finding a way in, somehow… Does anyone have any advice (Fly Whisperers, nontoxic versions of Raid, cheap and effective deterrents, etc.)?
I have no garbage or food in the house but I’ve been sharing my space with big, fat, black, hairy old flies. I think I’ve plugged up all the holes but they’re obviously still finding a way in, somehow… Does anyone have any advice (Fly Whisperers, nontoxic versions of Raid, cheap and effective deterrents, etc.)?
Could they also be carpenter ants? Had a large nest in my wall and manage to kill them off with some bleach once I figured out where in the wall the nest was. See if they look like this: http://www.baystatepest.com/images/diff.gif
The big, fat, slow ones are probably in the woodwork somewhere. I used to get them every year when the weather warmed up. I never figured out where they lurked. By killing them, they gradually stopped appearing.
Well! I certainly picked the wrong post to read while consuming my lunch….
google fleshfly and blowfly images, there are dozens of subspecies.
@rob: No animals that poop indoors! It’s such a mystery. I don’t really know what kind of flies they are, but now that I think of it, there may have been 2 different kinds. My highly scientific classifications for them are:
1. Big, fat, black, hairy and super slow (could almost catch them with chopsticks), gross
2. Big, angular, some green in the body, red eyes, gross
They seem pretty standard. Houseflies?
@daveinbedstuy: I’m thinking (hoping) that if there were a dead mouse somewhere, I’d smell it — and if it was all dried out and past the point of being whiffy, it wouldn’t provide much food/shelter for new flies to come forth. This fly problem has been ongoing, off and on over the last 5 or so months 🙁
@Petebklyn: maggots! (cries)
@momo284: That makes a lot of sense. It does seem to be a pretty leaky apartment. Charming brownstone architecture from the 1900s, with plumbing from the same era. Ew.
That’s what i was getting at, pete. If there was a dead mouse or something, one fly can lay a lot of eggs that turn into a lot of maggots that turn into a swarm of flies a few days later.
do you have animals that poop indoors? maybe a large critter that pooped you dont know about? like someone said they may have bred inside. i used to have a rabbit, and one time i had to go away for the weekend and left the window in. a fly must have got in. when i got back there were hundreds of giant flies all over my apartment. it was terrifying. they must have laid eggs in the rabbits droppings. ick. are you talking about house flies, horseflies? or like those grody gnats that some people in their sink drains?
*rob*
@daveinbedstuy: I’ve been living in this apartment for about 5 months and I’ve had maybe 3 bad incidences of sudden and rather spectacular swarms. I estimate that I’ve killed about 60 flies by now. It’s sooo gross.
@Maly: Sounds horrific. It never occurred to me that there were different kinds of flies (just figured they were all black and green and gross), but now that I think of it, the flies I found last night were different – more angular or something. I’ll have to Google it!