Mom was wrong?

Most of our mothers never intentionally lied to us.  No, but they did tell us old wives’ tales.  Of course, they did that to teach us young-‘uns things that would protect us in our later lives; to make us better people; to help us get along with others; and function in society.

But there was one thing our mothers said that turns out to be wrong.

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They’re called old wives’ tales for a reason.  When we were around ten years old, our mothers were the ripe old age of 30, or maybe even 35. Yeah, that doesn’t sound so old to me now either, but it sure did then. 

Then it was ANCIENT!

In those days, we kids gained much of our early knowledge from our mothers, often in the form of short quips, quotes, or rhymes.

Known to grammarians as aphorisms, most of us can spout a few without even thinking about it.  “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight; red sky at morning, sailor take warning.  Heartburn while you carry means your baby’s hairy.  An apple a day keeps the doctor away.  Starve a cold, feed a fever” (or is it the other way around?).

But it was illustrated to me a while back that Mom was wrong about one thing she said.

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 When Annie and I moved to our new home outside Piggott, Arkansas, we found that mosquitoes were almost voracious enough to carry us away at night.  In the historically swampy areas of Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas, this was to be expected.  Besides, since we discovered the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator, we believed we could get that problem under control before too long.

However, the previous owners had owned free-range chickens.  I like free-range chickens…for the most part.  Chickens being chickens, they weren’t potty trained and tended to unload wherever the urge hit them.  Since they liked to hang out around the house, they sometimes left little “gifts” on the front porch, the stoop on the carport, the rest of the carport, the sidewalk…you get the idea.  The previous owners had also kept horses in the pasture, and those beautiful animals left their deposits wherever they wanted too.  Although road apples don’t attract flies nearly as badly as chicken droppings, horses themselves do draw flies, including horseflies and greenflies, both of which bite with teeth that would make a pit-bull cry.

The sellers took their horses and their chickens, and cleaned up the poop right around the house, but left all the flies.  The flies were almost as bad during the day as the mosquitoes were at night.  Swatting them got old pretty quick.  Using my Fly Shooter is fun, especially for the grandkids, but is, honestly, not the most convenient or efficient method of fly control.

We continued to soldier on at first, as we had so much to do to get the property to the point we wanted it to be, and of course we had plenty of work still to do out at the cabin when we could spare a weekend.  Then one day I came home and noticed a modified wide-mouth sports drink bottle on the back porch, about ¼ full of a honey-colored liquid.  Annie and a visiting daughter-in-law had built a fly-trap.

My wife and Marlaina had built one of those insect traps where you cut the top portion off a plastic drink bottle, then invert it and reinsert it into the bottle.  Someone inevitably repeated the words of mothers everywhere when they want to teach kids how to get along with others, “You can catch more flies with a teaspoon of honey than you can with a gallon of vinegar.”  So they had partially filled the fly trap with honey and placed it on our back porch, where it has sat for a few weeks…and caught a total of five flies.

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OK, OK, I know flies love honey.  Heck, they love anything sweet, or remotely edible, for that matter.  I also know that soda or water bottles can make effective insect traps.  The wide-mouthed sports drink bottle was a choice based on availability and not because my wife thought it was the best choice.  The mouth was a little too big and allowed flies to escape more easily.  It was grandkids’ week, and one of the grands had the bottle on hand, so they used it.

Still, we needed something more effective.

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Annie and I both started doing some research.  We both found the Ranch Fly Trapper at about the same time.  I sent Annie a link to the trap only to find that she had already ordered some.

The Ranch Fly Trapper is pretty cheap.  I found them on eBay for as little as $3 apiece with free shipping.  The trap consists of a cylinder about 8-inches wide with sides, top, and bottom made of fine cloth mesh stretched around a couple wire rings.  The bottom is the important part.  It is a cone made of the same mesh, pointing up into the cylinder.  Suspended beneath the wide end of the cone is a plastic bowl.

You hang the trap using a hook in the top and put bait in the bowl.  What bait you use doesn’t matter as much as how it smells, so be sure you hang it somewhere the smell won’t be carried by the breeze to somewhere you’ll be, uh, breathing.  Different users prefer different baits.  Some recommend poop, or rotten fruit, or rotten eggs, or cat food, or even road kill.  Like I said, it doesn’t matter too much what you choose, but you do need to keep it moist, so that it keeps producing foul odors.  If it dries up it won’t smell as strongly.  We’ll probably try fish flavored cat food or something like that.

The theory is that flies will be attracted to the bait and, with the fly’s natural tendency to fly upward, go up along the sides of the cone and through the open, pointy end and into the mesh-enclosed cylinder. 

Now, flies are known for bugging people and animals, carrying disease, and eating some pretty disgusting stuff.  They are not, however, known for being particularly smart.  They will be attracted to the stinky bait, and follow the cone up and into the bag, even as it fills with more and more flies.  It never occurs to them that, “Hey, my friends are all in that mesh bag, screaming and dying.  This may not be a good idea.”  No, they smell the odiferous smorgasbord and think, “Hey, look at all my friends!  That must be a great place to hang out!”

When you have caught all the flies you want, or just want to empty the bag, you can spray the flies to kill them, and toss it all in the trash.  I saw one owner who raised chickens and he didn’t use poison.  He would remove the bait bowl and lower the trap to the ground, where it collapsed into a more-or-less flat object, then he gently stepped on it to kill all the remaining live flies.  After that he detached the hook supporting the cone in an upward direction and shook the trap to pour those thousands of flies into his chicken pen. 

Hey, free chicken food!

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Annie also brought home a couple other traps called the RESCUE! Outdoor Fly Trap.  These consist of a plastic jar with a lid that has a baffle insert.  It includes a bag of bait.  Talk about easy to use!  You open the bag of bait and dump it into the jar.  Then you add water to the fill line and pull the baffle insert up before screwing the lid back on. Hang the whole thing from whatever.  Again, don’t put it upwind from anyplace where you don’t want to smell it, and leave it alone.  Before long the bait begins to smell like rotten eggs and draw in flies from anywhere downwind.    

Yes, it’s just that easy.  I put one up one evening and the next morning when I checked it there were already a dozen or so flies in the jar.

When it’s full or you are ready to end your fly trapping adventure just take it down and throw it away.  Being raised in the old waste not, want not tradition, I’ll probably take the jar down, slide the baffle back inside so nothing else can get in, then dump it out when all the flies are dead.  Bait refills are available and reasonably priced.  Otherwise I’ll just wash it out and, when I’m ready to re-use it I’ll just drop in some rotten egg, cat food, or poop (not mine, of course) along with a little water, and hang it back up.

Ta da-a-a-a!

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There are other fly traps on the market.  Some use sticky tape that you just discard when you are done with them.  Others use poison.  I’m not a bunny-hugger but I’d rather use more natural methods with re-useable materials if possible, like the Ranch Fly Trapper and the RESCUE! Outdoor Fly Trap.

So, OK, Mom was right that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar but, when I repeated that old adage to one of my Marine Corp buddies, he quickly countered, “But you can catch a lot more flies with a little bit of bulls—t than you can with any amount of honey.”

Sorry Mom, I’ll have to go with my buddy on this one…but I still love you more.

Just sayin’.

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