RICHARD FAGERLUND: Bagged water creates double-vision-plus havoc for flies

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Several interesting items in this column: First, about 15 years ago, I wrote a column about how Ziploc baggies filled with water will deter flies. I read a piece about how it was tested at a Midwestern university. It really works. You fill the bags with water, and if you want, put a few pennies in the bag, although that isnt necessary but a lot of people do it. Then, tape the bag to a door, window or anywhere else you dont want flies. It has to be someplace where it gets sunlight, as the light in the water causes the flies, which have many eye facets, to see double a hundred times over and they get really confused and dont know where they are and leave the area.

There are a lot of restaurants that put these bags on poles in their outside dining areas. It also works in barns and other places where flies like to congregate.

So if you have flies and you want them somewhere else, hang some Ziploc bags with water in the area. If you want to catch the flies, put out a bowl of vinegar with some sugar in it and you will catch a bunch of them. Either way is much better than using pesticides that do more damage than good.

On a scary note, I was in a large, well-known restaurant recently talking to them about how they can do their own pest control. Oddly enough, their regular pest control company was there servicing the restaurant while I was there.

Richard Fagerlund.

That wasnt on purpose, simply just coincidence. I watched this fellow as he was spraying pesticide with an aerosol can along baseboards, around tables and even in areas where women were working. It was totally unreal and this is a very well-known large company. After he left, we looked in closets and there were sticky traps full of roaches that this fellow never checked. It may have been one of the worst pest services I have seen in a long time.

There were lots of German roaches in areas the fellow never looked or sprayed. I showed the folks how to spray the roaches with a mixture of alcohol, water and soap, and the roaches were dropping all over the place. I showed them several other things they can do to solve their problem, such as pheromone traps and they will do so. First, they are going to cancel the service of the company that was there.

On another occasion, I was called downtown to give someone an opinion on a termite inspection he had. It was an apartment complex with four buildings that had crawl spaces.

The company gave him a bid of over $4,000 to treat all the buildings. When I went out there, it was clear the company never even went under the buildings, as most of the crawl-space openings were either blocked or just not accessible. The fellow said that when he mentioned that the bid was too high, the company offered to reduce it to $2,500 and just treat under the building and not around the perimeter. This is, of course, totally illegal.

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RICHARD FAGERLUND: Bagged water creates double-vision-plus havoc for flies