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How to Make a Fly Trap

Not only are flies annoying, but they are disgusting too. They can spread diseases just by landing on your food, without your even noticing. They can ruin the time you spend outside trying to relax, and they can sneak inside every time you open the door. And while raising animals and having a compost pile may increase their numbers, even if you have no animals and a near sterile yard, they can fly on over from your neighbor’s. What can you do about it? Trap them with a few things you probably already have laying around the house, and here’s how.

How to make a fly trap:

First gather up some materials, a symmetrical smooth plastic bottle (it can’t be a milk bottle or any type of bottle with a handle or ridges), some string or wire, some sugar, and some yeast or bread crumbs.
Next, cut the bottle in two about 1/3 of the way down. Remove the lid.
Turn the upper portion of the bottle upside down and slide it into the lower portion until the two cut ends meet.
This should leave the bottle top a few inches from the bottle of the bottle.
Now, make a couple of holes through both pieces on opposite sides of the bottle just below the cut line that is now the top. Thread the string or wire through the holes in whatever manner you like so as to allow you to use the string to hang the bottle by later.
Finally, put a few spoons full of sugar and yeast or bread crumbs into the bottle, then carefully add water so that it comes about ½ inches or so from touching the upside down bottle top. The trap will not work if the water line is too far below, or if it touches the bottle top.

The trap functions by attracting the flies in, they have to land on the narrow opening and crawl in, but they will tend want to fly away instead of crawl around searching for an exit. This will have them either up in the corners where they can’t get out, or drowning in the yeasty water that attracted them.

Once your bottle trap is ready, hang it up in a tree or on a fence near your place. Since it’s pretty easy and inexpensive to make, you might want to put one at each corner of your yard and one near your garbage can. If you don’t see flies in your trap, adjust the water line or change your bait. When the trap is full of dead flies you can wash it out if you like, but since it’s made out of trash anyway you can just throw it away and save yourself from a nasty task. Happy fly hunting!

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