Fly Control

It's that time of summer, where the number of flies hanging around the Farmlette explodes.  Between the warm temperatures, high humidity, and my penchant for mulching everything in rotted down poo, they are very happy little insects.

I find it extremely horrific to walk outside, and realize: The yard is humming.  Not with bees, with the sound of flies.  It's like some bad horror film.

So I stopped in at the farm store while I was running around town, doing essential things like getting a manicure, and perused their aisle of all things fly control.  It was impressive.  There were about 20 different kinds of nasty pesticides that you could "safely spray around animals", then in smaller print "not to be used around animals intended for food".  (I didn't bring any of that particular crap home.)  Instead, I went for the bag o' stinkiness.  Inside is something that smells like rancid butter-meets-roadkill, that combines with water to make an irresistable slurry, attractive to all kinds of poo-eating flies.  If the number of flies that came and hung around me while baiting the traps were any indication of how attractive the stink is, the Farmlette should see a definite reduction in flying creatures soon.  I have bags hung inside and outside the Big Coop, and one in the run of the Little Coop.  I also have a bucket version that is squatting in the overgrown herb garden, where a lot of flies seem to be hanging out lately.  I don't know why they are there, maybe something is dead under the rampant mint, but they seemed to really  like the stench of the liquid bait the bucket used. 

May they all go in and die a happy drunken drowning death.