It was still dark out when I woke up (thank you to my 3-month old son) and my stomach made that annoying gurgling sound. After 30 minutes of feeding a baby who wanted to play instead I groggily walked to the kitchen to get the last Red delicious apple. I opened up the breadbox where I always keep them and I jumped back as a swarm of fruit flies clouded my face.
I was confused. The apple was tied tightly in a plastic bag then placed in my "air-tight" breadbox. Where'd they come from? Why did they choose my last apple? I had to find out.
According to an article on discovery.com fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster ) come from the outdoors unlike popular belief that they just appear with "spontaneous generation."
The article says that up until about 100 years ago, people thought that if you left a piece of meat out flies would somehow emerge from it. Therefore, an Italian doctor decided to cover up the meat: No more flies.
Wrong. They're still here and they're still eating everyone's fruit.
Fruit flies eat a diet of yeast, which can be found in ripe fruit. They stay away from your unripe bananas and oranges. Why aren't there any fruit flies swarming the fruit section at Price Chopper? Usually because those fruits aren't ripe yet. Smart on their part.
Now to warn you about the gross factor. The flies lay eggs that turn into larvae (MAGGOTS!!!!) that will spend days eating the yeast products then hatch into fruit flies and then continue the cycle. There could be eggs on my delicious apple the instant I see a fruit fly and then only 30 hours later the disgusting squirmy maggots can appear and lots of them.
Okay so I throw the fruit away in the dumpster because I am deathly afraid of maggots. But there's still a few stragglers flying around my kitchen. Why are they still here? Marvelously, fruit flies can live on a range of other things beside your fruits. They can get nutrients from a scummy mop, the slime of a sink drain, or get this... they can live on a diet of alcohol fumes. Their tiny gross little bodies deploy a special chemical that can convert the alcohol to nutrients before it can poison them. Too bad for me.
Next bad news, their lifespan is only 8 days, but they breed at a rapid rate. Discovery.com gave an example that is absolutely mind-boggling. "one pair of flies, in one year, can produce a dynasty that, packed in a ball, would fill the void between the Earth and the Sun."
Looks like we'll never be rid of these little critters. An easy way to trap them is to use a wine bottle with just a little bit of wine left in the bottom, they'll smell the fruit and dive to their deaths. Guess I'll be finishing a bottle of wine tonight.
Amusing tale, well told.
ReplyDeleteWhen you have two independent clauses separated by "and," you should have a comma before the "and."
I really liked your blog. It was very entertaining and informational. Now I know to think twice when I see a fruit fly hovering around my fruits. They're so disgusting aren't they? There's just too many of them.
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