A friend of ours, Charmaine Manley Design, is always on the lookout for the most environmentally friendly ways to take care of certain problems and she is willing to share her finds with us over here at GLR!Today’s tip is about how best to scare away flies. There is no death involved, no harsh chemicals or sticky substances. The best way to scare off flies is a bag full of water.
Nope, I’m not kidding at all! It seems that a friend and fan of This Old House who lives in the Miami, Florida region of the United States tested the experiment out and was amazed to find that flies actually flew away from the dangling bag of water.
He placed a smelly pan of something outside to attract the flies and then held the bag full of water near the swarm. Apparently within just a few minutes the flies were all scared off. And no one had to kill them to do it!
The theory is a fly sees the bag as something predatory looking to trap it for dinner, a spider web or hornets nest perhaps, through the refraction of light over their many eyes and that shoos the fly away. It seems this practice is most popular in more temperate climates. From what I’ve read it only appears to work on flies, not stinging insects such as bees, mosquitoes, wasps or hornets.
Take a regular old, large zip top, clear plastic bag. Fill it about half way with plain old tap water. Use a heavy duty string or twine to tie the bag shut and leave plenty of slack on one end so it can be strung up on a hook above the area you are looking to protect and have a fly repellant that is environmentally friendly, non-toxic, safe, inexpensive and simple.
Some people also place a penny inside. A theory on this is that the fly sees the penny as a big spider in the web and they want to stay away. Since we unfortunately can’t get inside the mind of a fly we just have to test it to see if it works.
I do not have problems with flies but I’m sure many of you do. If this is something you test out I would love to hear about your experiences with using this method for effectiveness!
2 comments:
This is really funny! I'll be the klutz who would run into the bag of water and get all wet, making all the flies laugh at me.
Thanks for sharing!
Sweet idea!
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