Have your say & ask the experts

I'm engaged in open warfare with fruitflies. I've put draincleaner down the sinks, left out flypaper, Japanese Plum wine with ceran wrap with little holes poked in, and balsamic vinegar in champagne flutes with paper cones.

I reckon I'm massacring them at a rate of about 80 per diem, but they just keep coming.

Any ideas? I don't know where they're coming from or what they're eating but the little expletive deleted are on my absolute very last back-up nerve.

Buy some frogs.

Throw some roadkill into the neighbour's garden. They'll all go there instead.

(We use Jeyes fluid for our drains about once a month. Good stuff. Douse then brush concrete paths with hot diluted Jeyes too.)

I too am battling a formidible foe myself, but mine is Mice. Caught two of the little bleeders in a humane trap and released them out in the road, but i still have issues, (Not sure if it's new mice, or the two I caught have broken back into my house.)

Would get a cat, but the Mrs doesn't want to trade one lot of problems for another (litter tray, clawing the furniture, hair, etc, etc.)

And the cats would bring them back to you dead as a present. Mine are expert hunters, though they have had great difficulty in getting crows in through the catflap, I've found.

Use inhumane traps, is the only answer.

Mice = total warfare.

Ensure doors, airbricks or any other potential points of ingress are properly sealed (you can put metal mesh behind airbricks) because they can squeeze through any hole you can poke a ballpoint pen through.

Poison, snap traps (bait them with chunks of jelly babies. The cleverer mice learn to nibble and lick other foodstuffs without setting the traps off.)

Never leave bread out and ensure kitchen floors are kept free of crumbs and other food particles especially in cavities under skirting boards.

We had a couple of 'visitors' a few years ago and it took almost a year before we accounted for them all. (We know we got 'em all because during a recent kitchen re-furb everything came out, plaster, units, floor, the lot and not one single meece corpse was found.)

One stoopid one found itself trapped in the kitchen bin and could not jump high enough to get out and another got trapped the same way in a large empty Special K box (they can't shimmy up the smooth plastic liners). We had to 'liberate' these in the local park because our youngest daughter found them both and she would not countenance meecey murder! (She even accompanied us in the car journey to the park to ensure there was no foul play.)

A couple more went up the hoover nozzle and local cats who use our garden as their lounging area took their toll.

The recent re-furb has taken care of any future ingress hopefully.

you hoovered a mouse up?  bloody hell!

Craig M.:

you hoovered a mouse up?  bloody hell!

Yes a couple of sluggish ones caught on-the-hop when I pulled the washing machine out during a spring clean. They were cornered.

It may be that the suction is actually 'pulling' the air foward over the mouse so it only gets it's own scent, the nozzle is actually a small dark cavity so as it approaches maybe it sees it as an escape route rather than impending doom. Maybe they were sleeping or maybe they were half poisoned. I don't really know but it worked.

Oh Chebby you're so wonderfully British. Hoovering up mice is such a pert example of that stereotypical eccentricity.

Thankfully my two cats are quite bored and take their toll. In fact there's never an insect to be seen usually owing to their sterling service. But I think these fruit flies are too small for them to see. They notice when one is buzzing around their ears but I think they can only hear it...

Ray you need to get an electionic insect killer. We've got this one from B&Q in our kitchen:

 http://tinyurl.com/5cwpo9

It works really well and catches insects of all sizes even the really tiny ones. Fruitflies won't be a problem. They are only £15. We leave ours on 24/7. The bulbs last 3 months and B&Q sells the replacement.

 Hope this helps.