“Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.”
This one-liner is another example of the genius of Groucho Marx, one of wittiest men who ever lived, in my humble opinion.
And speaking about fruit flies, my wife and I recently took off for a romantic, three-day getaway. When we got back to our house, we encountered two terribly rotten, black, mushy bananas on our kitchen counter. And they were covered with tiny little fruit flies. Gross!
Naturally, we tossed out the rotten, black bananas, but we were left with having to deal with a horde of annoying fruit flies.
Where did these things come from? We’ve never had a fruit fly problem in our house. Did they just spontaneously generate themselves in our absence?
Being the resourceful person that I am, I Googled, “Where do fruit flies come from?” One site actually mentioned spontaneous generation. It said:
“When it comes to fruit flies in your home, the idea of spontaneous generation seems to be in play. Fruit flies seem to magically appear around fruit and other foods quickly and without fail in an otherwise insect-free kitchen. Of course, modern science has proven that spontaneous generation is impossible. So the question remains; where do fruit flies come from?”
Modern science? Yeah, right. Another myth of modern science, like climate change or evolution.
There is no doubt in my mind that these pesky fruit flies generated themselves right from within those rotting bananas.
Even the great ancient Greek philosophers recognized the validity of spontaneous generation. In his “History of Animals,” Aristotle wrote of fruit flies, “Some spring from parent animals…while others grow spontaneously…from putrefying earth or vegetable matter….”
Exactly! Just like fruit flies from rotten bananas!
Okay, regardless of their origin, be it spontaneous generation or something more consistent with the theories of “modern science,” like hitching a ride to my kitchen in a grocery bag, the task at hand was to eradicate them. So I once again turned to Google and typed “How to get rid of fruit flies.” I was amazed to find well over 100,000 entries.
Most sites suggested either constructing a homemade fruit fly trap of some sort or heading to your local hardware store and picking up a commercially available fruit fly trap. Who knew that there was such a thing as a commercially available fruit fly trap? And yet there are. Good old American ingenuity. Wouldn’t you know that no matter what the problem, someone has come up with a way to make a buck addressing it?
Anyway, long story short, I decided to have a contest to see which approach, a homemade solution or one of those “commercially available fruit fly traps,” could rid my kitchen of fruit flies better.
My homemade trap consisted of a small bowl into which I put a rotting nectarine, a half a banana, and a touch of vinegar. Then I tightly stretched Saran Wrap over the bowl and poked about half a dozen holes in the Saran Wrap with a toothpick.
I also hung the fruit fly trap I bought at the hardware store on the other side of the counter.
The next day I checked the results. There were two dead fruit flies stuck to the hardware store trap. But there were more than a dozen of those little buggers beneath the Saran Wrap cover of the bowl.
Yes, America, we have a clear winner.
Feel free to print this post should your kitchen ever experience fruit fly spontaneous generation.
You’re welcome.
This was written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G. Hill.
How’s this for a one-liner?
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