Fly Control

Remove all food sources. As with most pests, the first step is to figure out why the fly has been attracted to your home. This is usually going to be because of a readily available food source. Different flies are attracted to and thrive in different environments. The kinds of flies that tend to be around my house live, eat, and breed in the filth inherit to farm life. But your situation might be different. In a more urban setting your source is more likely to be rotting garbage, dead animals, or pet feces. You need to inspect your environment, identify these food sources (inside and outside your house), and remove them.

Block flies from entering your home. Your first line of defense is the walls of your house. I happen to live in a house that was built during the McKinley administration. The foundation has some pretty big gaps in it and the wood siding is degraded, which makes it an easy entrance point for a number of pests (especially insects like Asian lady beetles and house flies). I am taking measures to remedy the situation by filling the gaps with canned foam. One could also use cement or caulking. Some other easy entrance points include: loose-fitting windows, screens with holes or torn seams, gaps around doors, open chimney flues, and non-screened vents in attics.

Fly tape will control flies. It's sticky, ugly, and hard to deal with, but it works. The thing about flies is that they fly like drunken idiots and given enough time they will inevitably fly into one of those sticky death traps. Our ribbons were completely loaded within a week. At this point you need to change the tape. You can make your own flypaper with this simple recipe: Mix a fourth cup corn syrup and two tablespoons of granulated sugar in a small bowl. Cut strips from a paper grocery bag and soak it in the syrup. Hang it up over a container for a few hours to catch the drips. You then use it as you would commercial fly strips.

Light traps are a good passive fly control. These are common in food service areas because they don't require any kind of poisons and they are self-contained (and therefore not a contamination hazard). They are kind of a cross between fly tape and the zapper. The fly is attracted to an ultraviolet light that is inside a triangular box hanging on the wall. The flies are funneled down inside the box where there is a sheet of sticky paper that you peel off and replace when full. These work well in places like kitchens, though they are sort of industrial looking and might not fit in with your decor.

Zappers control flies outside. I have fond memories of late-night gatherings at my great-uncle's house when I was a child. He had a hobbit hole that he used for potato storage and he had a bug zapper—both are prime sources of entertainment for young boys. Bug zappers work by attracting insects toward a light source and then surrounding that light source with enough electricity to fry an elephant. These devices will attract insects and kill them. However, the vast majority of the insects killed will be harmless pollinators—and this is a bad thing. So, keep that in mind.