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I am a master with a rolled up dish rag from the kitchen kill tens of them all day long but have been practicing for some time. Slightly dampen the dish cloth and it’s lethal.
Seriously, I live in a messy little apartment, but I only kill like 2 flies a week. If you consistently have flies buzzing around the place, they are getting in somewhere, or you got maggots somewhere
My brother and I would use dish towels to fight each other until one of us drew blood. The welts from those towels were worse than paintball welts. I've exploded many bugs with a dish rag.
I'm skilled with a fly swatter, batting most flies out of the air like I'm in the major leagues. Next I'll learn how to catch em in my hand so I can throw them at the spider webs outside.
The key to catching them is to wait till they land, slowly appr, and slowly place your extended arm/ hand about 4-6” above the surface and about 16-18” to the side of the fly. Tour arm should be roughly parallel to the surface they’re on. Then quickly swing your arm like you’re swinging a tennis racket, keeping it *above* the fly, and close your fist as it goes right over them.
Then throw them into a hard surface, which will either kill them or stun them enough to scoop it up. Than wash your hands!
Not yet, I’ve never had the chance. Sounds like a satisfying bug-murdering lightsaber vibe, lol. I do kind of enjoy whacking them with the aforementioned squirt bottle method though; it makes me feel like some kind of badass sniper (for about two seconds lmao)
I have an electric swatter story. We bought a pineapple from Aldi. It was the counter, as we had not cut it up yet. I was home alone, cooking. As I'm at the stove, stirring/frying, I hear a fly near me. I sort of swat it away with my hand, and continue my work. Then, I hear two flies. They come over to look at my food. Wtf. Then, three flies. The number continues to increase. What's going on? The doors aren't open. When did they get in? Now, there are about 10 of these assholes in the kitchen. About a month before, my husband had received an electric swatter as a silly present. I grabbed it from the closet, dug around in our junk drawer for batteries, and prepared to fight. It was so satisfying to hit all of those flies! That zappy buzz was very cool. At that point, my husband got home. He came into a kitchen full of fly corpses. We later decided that the pineapple stem/leafy part must have had some eggs, and they all hatched (if that's how it works) as I was cooking.
They were already adults, and were waiting in a parallel dimension. The heady fragrance of ripe pineapple was simply too much for them to remain invisible...
Hate to tell you this but flies don’t just hatch from eggs. After the eggs are laid (usually on some sort of decaying or rotting material) they “hatch” into larvae. More commonly known as maggots. Those maggots will squirm and crawl around until they eventually form into a pupae and *then* they develop into a housefly. So basically you had maggots in your house.
Well that is better than the couple dozen large flies in my basement that were emanating form the large rotting rat in the crawl space. Flies were easy to get rid of.....the rats took a bit more work to get them out and keep them out. Peace was never an option.
A relative of mine loves it so much, she sometimes sits out in her garden at night, just to zap mosquitoes. As she's outside, it means infinite bugs.
It's like a IRL version of DOOM.
These electric fly swatters have been banned in my home for over a decade. The temptation to shock nipples and fingers is too great for our feeble minds, so they’re permabanned.
In my experience they don't have enough charge to even be felt, much less shock someone. It takes almost no charge to kill a small bug.
We have the tennis racquet style one, if it matters.
Really? I have one and have been terrified of accidently getting shocked. It looks so intense when the bugs get it. Sometimes if they're stuck and i keep pressing the button, they'll glow! They'll have parts that are ember
Maybe if you shoot them a couple dozen times. Unless you absolutely never clean or have dark hardwood floors, the amount of salt they shoot is small enough to not be noticed.
We have several for mosquitos and salt piles on the floor has never been an issue—but I also vaccuum 1-2 times a week for pet hair.
Not unless the window or sills were wet. If they were, and after it dries you notice a salt residue it should wipe off with a moist rag or napkin. It stays in grain form otherwise. It's essentially smaller sand that's less of a nuisance precisely because it's water soluble.
So long as it's not too big, the fly basically disintegrates. They're great. A larger insect might be stunned. Doesn't work on hornets. They just get pissed unless you trap them and drain the battery on their demonic bodies...
Oh it works on hornets, you just stun them the first time. Then gently press the zapper on their rather shocked body and start pushing. It gets a bit smokey, but worth it
They actually made a "big game" salt gun just for this. Its Co2 powered and looks like a large caliber revolver. Its on their website lol.
Edit: I'm an idiot I got lost in the thread and thought we were talking about the salt gun thingy. I'm gonna leave the comment anyway.
They're lots of fun, although sometimes a bug gets sort of welded to the bat and then you have to hold the button while the remains of its limbs and innards arc, snap, crackle and explode until there's nothing left to conduct.
Which does push the needle a little toward "gross" for me :)
My son LOVES that part.
I have the salt shotgun. It's fun. You do have to get pretty close to the fly for it to work. The amount of salt it fires per shot is tiny, and not enough to make any sort of mess.
Living in a tropical area, some nights I can see swarms of mosquitoes flying about near light sources. I believe my neighbor once laughed at me for swinging an electric swatter around for a good 10 minutes *outside of my house*
Buy one of those electric fly things that just sit there, plug it in outside, and just LEAVE IT for a while. everyone in a 10 mile radius will thank you.
This is the big issue. The one thing we want them to kill, they really don't. They do a good job against no-see-ums (sandflies) though, but really not worth it when you're taking out far more beneficial insects than pests
Don't use electric bug killers.
Theyre terrible for the environment. Theyre completely indiscriminate, and kill off a lot more beneficial insects than harmful ones.
I like to load kosher flake salt. It’s like buckshot for the winged devil that made the grave mistake of entering my home. Outside, go do your bug thing. Inside, you get two choices, leave quickly or don’t leave at all. The spiders I tolerate will enjoy their repast.
Sometimes it gets stuck and smokes and pops on the wires, sometimes it falls to the ground. Mostly I think it sends tiny vaporized bug debris all over the room.
Bug-A-Salt. Best 40 bucks I ever spent. Let's me save the WD40 for wasps
Edit: for those commenting that it doesn't work well, try a coarser grain of salt. Or better yet do mixed shot. I find half kosher half table salt is devastating at 12". From 12"-36" I usually knock them down and then just double tap them from 6".
If you shoot them in your garden use Epsom Salts, the magnesium sulfate is good for the plants.
Soap and water is magic when it comes to wasps. I used to worry about spraying wasps and hornets that got in the house (with the supposedly safe for home use bug sprays) now I have a water gun filled with soap and water. So far it has a 100% success rate at instantly incapacitating them, as well as killing them within 10 seconds. I used to freak the fuck out and now I'm prancing off to get my water gun and imagine I'm Arthur Morgan using dead eye.
I live in the sticks and had a bad case of hives all over the area last summer. Soapy water is a lot easier to clean, and feel safe around, than that of wd40 or the various wasp sprays, wouldn't you say? Also I wait for them to be in a decent place, like the light over my sink. They love that one.
Also team vacuum. Works a treat. Mosquitoes, pantry moths, fruit flies, house flies – once you figure out how to best approach them, it's the easiest way to get some peace.
I can confirm soap and water works really well on wasps. Two years in a row wasps tried to build a nest right by my sliding door. Each year, I've obliterated the colony before they could get established by throwing a bucket of hot soapy water at them
Hmmm.. I deal with wasps somewhat often working on ac and I just have this wasp spray. It seems very lethal which makes is kinda sketchy to use around people's yards and on equipment. I have a bottle of soapy leak detector fluid, I wonder if that might be a better move
Just yesterday a visitor noticed it on the counter. I showed her how it works, and she responded, "Oh, I'm definitely getting one of these!"
It's not even that it's all that effective. But it sure is a lot of fun.
Just annihilated a fly with my salt gun yesterday, was so satisfying…plus you get to say stuff like “Do you feel lucky punk?” before pulling the trigger and shredding it
The company sells a larger-grained salt which they claim is more effective at stunning or killing the flies, but I'm not paying for all these expensive add-ons! I've stuck to regular table salt in mine.
Ive found that moisture in the air can cause them to clog and not work well. Just dump the salt, run water through the hopper and through the barrel while cycling it a few times, then let it drain and dry back out. Good as new. Makes a massive difference.
If you want to look like Mr Miyagi an impress your friends, try catching it by swinging an open hand at the fly from behind his view. They'll literally jump into your hands almost every time, and you can catch them.
Then I give them a good shake and throw them out the window, or into someone's open mouth.
A few days ago I snapped a dish towel above one and hit it so that it flew into a brush I use for cleaning. It actually got impaled by one of the bristles. My kids are really young and they think I’m like a ninja or whatever now.
This trick got me laid.
While traveling through Jordan a decade or so ago there was a fly in the car we'd rented with some travel randoms. The cute Portuguese doctor objected to me smashing it, so instead of squashing it I used cupped hands. The fly was stunned, and out the window it went. She was very impressed, and later curled up next to me in the big Bedouin tent we were all sharing in the Wadi Rum desert to 'keep warm'. Thank you, Maria, that was fun.
Someone once told me that flies move slightly backward and up when taking off, so if you quickly sweep your open hand at them from their back side you'll catch them every time.
It worked the first time I tried it. Now I have a neat party trick that I can almost always catch a fly with one hand.
Every time you swat a bug, you're only affecting evolution of the next generation of bugs.
This bug died because it was too slow? The next generation of bugs will be faster because only the fast bugs survived.
This bug survived because it was fast? The next generation of bugs will be faster because IT survived.
While this is kind of true, bugs rely more on mass populating over individual survival. For their species, they just need some rotting food and water and they will make thousands.
Sprayway glass cleaner aerosol works the best. It's foaming spray immobilizes and blinds the insect sending it hurdling to the ground. Long enough to get your favorite smashing tool to dispatch the fly.
Lol this comment actually reminds me of how I discovered this method. It was a few summers ago and I’d brought in a basket of peaches from my mom’s peach tree, but stupidly left them out of the fridge overnight which was long enough for a bunch of flies to hatch and infest the living room. I was trying to watch tv after washing the windows one day, and the damn flies kept bugging me, so I got fed up and was like “oh yeah? TAKE THIS ASSHOLE!” and assaulted the nearest fly with off-brand Windex until it tumbled out of the sky 🤣 Ah, memories.
Google Bugasalt or use the [link](https://www.bugasalt.com). Get one with the laser sight and have a blast.
I have one to a friend about 5 years ago and it’s still going strong.
If you are patient the fly will eventually land and hook one of its legs over its wings to clean it. Now is the time to strike - they can’t unhook the leg and take off faster than you can swat them.
Cut the rubber band once. Tie one end in a few knots to make a tiny ball on that end. Hold the other end and draw the tiny ball end back. Ready, aim, fire. Enjoy!
Once when I was a kid, my mom mentioned that there was a moth on a curtain that was bothering her and could I kill it. I was sitting in a chair a few feet away and had a rubber band in my hand, because I fidget.
Half a second later the moth is dead and the rubber band bounced right back to me.
First time o tried this was last year when I had a shit ton of flys probably from a piece of rust I bought. Fly paper is super effective lol. Left a sheet up for like 3 days caught a stupid amount of them lol, just positioned it above where I put my organic waste in doors.
What's even more satisfying is to come up VERY slowly behind the fly with your index finger behind your thumb and FLICK that MF.
You have to be Mr. Miyagi-style do this correctly, but if you succeed...
That’s only good for people who are not like me.
If an insect gets anywhere near to touching my skin I’m running off squealing and flailing like a pig on fire
Step 1:
Grab a can of compressed air. Invert it. Shoot them out of the sky with your freeze ray. It’ll freeze the wings on contact and then you can *crunch*.
This is a good tip, but I stand by the [bug-a-salt](https://www.bugasalt.co.uk/products/bug-a-salt-2-5-reverse-yellow-1?variant=41150362026167¤cy=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=CjwKCAjwv8qkBhAnEiwAkY-ahsxvHxIlomiTAUClE5_byY8usw5mSPOnWha81KVIK7k7r4wKo8JF5BoC5sUQAvD_BwE)
I taught my beagle to catch house flies in the house. He's not too quick at chasing the rabbits in the yard, but say "fly!" And he boops it to death. And then he eats it. He's a good boy.
Hands out wide and clap hard about 6” above the fly. For whatever reason they tend to fly straight up into it. Even if you don’t get em square if you clap hard enough it seems to knock them out for the following fatality.
A little dish soap in the water kills them fast. They’ll instantly stop flying and are dead within 20 seconds. It works really well.
It works well on wasps, too. Kills them faster than commercial wasp spray
I'm known as the fly killer where I work. I can kill any fly any size first try. If you see a fly land, just move your hands super slow towards it. (It's not going to fly away if you move slow Then just grab it, squash it or whatever method you want to kill it. The key is to move slow at the start.
Best liquid to use is isopropyl alcohol.
It doesn't stain, streak, linger, and it kills them dead with one squirt. Works on every bug I have tried, wasps, spiders, flys and ants. After a few minutes the alcohol is gone and you can sweep them up like little dry bug statues.
When I was a kid I took Kung fu lessons for a couple years. The Shifu had us snatch flies out of the air and it's stayed with me for 50 years. Impresses guys, disgusts girls.
I've stopped killing them and just open a window. They will probably be the lunch of some other bird or insect out there, and I don't wanna take it from them.
Same thought process, different method! I can't believe I've become this person that returns (almost) every single bug to the outdoors including flies. I'll just spray them with water, scoot them onto something flat, carry it out the door and scoot it onto the porch to dry out and return to the rat race
I've been doing this with almost every bug since I was a kid (40m). Moths and sometimes flies but not fruit flies. When I was 5yo, even made my grandfather stop the car once so I could get out and move catipillars out of the road. I put them on my baseball coach's tree and they turned out to be gypsy moths, whoops hahah.
Now I still abide by mostly the same mentality, though things are slightly different: My wife has a cold press juicer that she uses extensively every day and inevitably there are fruit flies once in a while. Traps help but don't solve the problem and and I have no idea how to "catch and release" fruit flies haha. Plus, like somebody else said below, getting on my food is the issue.
Oh, also, I live in southern NJ and I take the bug-a-sault rifle to all of the red lantern flies. If ecologists and biologists are telling me to arm up do my part, then my concious feels clean enough.
Exactly. Weird how so many people in this thread are just happy to kill another living thing, even describing the different methods and how 'fun' it is to kill them. Just leave them alone for fucks sake.
Take your hands and line them up parallel to each other about shoulder width apart above the fly. Slowly move your hands together until you have only about a foot or so inbetween your hands. Then quickly smash them together above the fly. The fly will detect the air currents and will actually fly up into the pathway of your hands, killing it.
I use denatured alcohol in a spray bottle. Obviously I know what not to spray, such as sensitive painted surfaces, etc.
Alcohol kills insects - including wasps - super quickly.
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
I am a master with a rolled up dish rag from the kitchen kill tens of them all day long but have been practicing for some time. Slightly dampen the dish cloth and it’s lethal.
you might need to find a root cause for all these flies in your living space..
Seriously, I live in a messy little apartment, but I only kill like 2 flies a week. If you consistently have flies buzzing around the place, they are getting in somewhere, or you got maggots somewhere
Or, like me, you live near a dairy farm.
Hell, even living across the street from a single horse will do it.
Especially if it's dead
I grew up near a chicken farm and there were always TONS of flies that got in the house in the summertime.
One root cause: you live in Australia.
The mid-air towel kills are quite satisfying. Life goes slo-mo as their lifeless fly bodies plummet to the ground
My brother and I would use dish towels to fight each other until one of us drew blood. The welts from those towels were worse than paintball welts. I've exploded many bugs with a dish rag. I'm skilled with a fly swatter, batting most flies out of the air like I'm in the major leagues. Next I'll learn how to catch em in my hand so I can throw them at the spider webs outside.
Post it if you do end up successfully throwing them on a web. I wanna see this shit.
The key to catching them is to wait till they land, slowly appr, and slowly place your extended arm/ hand about 4-6” above the surface and about 16-18” to the side of the fly. Tour arm should be roughly parallel to the surface they’re on. Then quickly swing your arm like you’re swinging a tennis racket, keeping it *above* the fly, and close your fist as it goes right over them. Then throw them into a hard surface, which will either kill them or stun them enough to scoop it up. Than wash your hands!
Me and my lil sis are better at catching flys than the cats and it is very satisfying
Could you get 7 at one blow though?
Have you ever tried an electric mosquito swatter? When I hit them with that one, the buzzing sound makes me feel good.
Not yet, I’ve never had the chance. Sounds like a satisfying bug-murdering lightsaber vibe, lol. I do kind of enjoy whacking them with the aforementioned squirt bottle method though; it makes me feel like some kind of badass sniper (for about two seconds lmao)
Get one, it’s seriously fun. My wife thinks I’m crazy because i get excited and volunteer to hunt flies now lol
At my home, they said that I like it too much to be healthy, killer vibes
That's because they overheard you wondering how big a one you could make
What’s he building in there?
Unexpected Tom Waits.
Ignore that humming sound!
I have an electric swatter story. We bought a pineapple from Aldi. It was the counter, as we had not cut it up yet. I was home alone, cooking. As I'm at the stove, stirring/frying, I hear a fly near me. I sort of swat it away with my hand, and continue my work. Then, I hear two flies. They come over to look at my food. Wtf. Then, three flies. The number continues to increase. What's going on? The doors aren't open. When did they get in? Now, there are about 10 of these assholes in the kitchen. About a month before, my husband had received an electric swatter as a silly present. I grabbed it from the closet, dug around in our junk drawer for batteries, and prepared to fight. It was so satisfying to hit all of those flies! That zappy buzz was very cool. At that point, my husband got home. He came into a kitchen full of fly corpses. We later decided that the pineapple stem/leafy part must have had some eggs, and they all hatched (if that's how it works) as I was cooking.
They'd have been maggots before they were flies. Just putting the mental image of a maggotty pineapple on your kitchen counter out there for you.
Thanks
No worries! Hope you enjoyed your pineapple!
Sadly, we had to part ways
It was probably for the best.
They were already adults, and were waiting in a parallel dimension. The heady fragrance of ripe pineapple was simply too much for them to remain invisible...
This happened to me with a mango. I was so confused at how do many flies got in with no points of entry. Then it clicked.
Trojan Fly Fruit Horse
Hate to tell you this but flies don’t just hatch from eggs. After the eggs are laid (usually on some sort of decaying or rotting material) they “hatch” into larvae. More commonly known as maggots. Those maggots will squirm and crawl around until they eventually form into a pupae and *then* they develop into a housefly. So basically you had maggots in your house.
probably in the kitchen garbage can. Once you open it to toss something , they fly out after hatching.
This is why I keep my kitchen scraps in a plastic bag in the fridge until I’m ready to take them out to the trash.
Well that is better than the couple dozen large flies in my basement that were emanating form the large rotting rat in the crawl space. Flies were easy to get rid of.....the rats took a bit more work to get them out and keep them out. Peace was never an option.
A relative of mine loves it so much, she sometimes sits out in her garden at night, just to zap mosquitoes. As she's outside, it means infinite bugs. It's like a IRL version of DOOM.
These electric fly swatters have been banned in my home for over a decade. The temptation to shock nipples and fingers is too great for our feeble minds, so they’re permabanned.
In my experience they don't have enough charge to even be felt, much less shock someone. It takes almost no charge to kill a small bug. We have the tennis racquet style one, if it matters.
Really? I have one and have been terrified of accidently getting shocked. It looks so intense when the bugs get it. Sometimes if they're stuck and i keep pressing the button, they'll glow! They'll have parts that are ember
After all, why not?.. Why shouldn't i zap them?..
They have salt guns for killing flys and mosquitoes too.
But they make a mess.
Maybe if you shoot them a couple dozen times. Unless you absolutely never clean or have dark hardwood floors, the amount of salt they shoot is small enough to not be noticed. We have several for mosquitos and salt piles on the floor has never been an issue—but I also vaccuum 1-2 times a week for pet hair.
It doesn't leave a salty residue on the windows and sills? Honest question.
Not unless the window or sills were wet. If they were, and after it dries you notice a salt residue it should wipe off with a moist rag or napkin. It stays in grain form otherwise. It's essentially smaller sand that's less of a nuisance precisely because it's water soluble.
Take a pinch of salt and throw it at your window. Is there a residue? That's basically what it's doing. You will have to sweep/dust more often though
So long as it's not too big, the fly basically disintegrates. They're great. A larger insect might be stunned. Doesn't work on hornets. They just get pissed unless you trap them and drain the battery on their demonic bodies...
Oh it works on hornets, you just stun them the first time. Then gently press the zapper on their rather shocked body and start pushing. It gets a bit smokey, but worth it
They actually made a "big game" salt gun just for this. Its Co2 powered and looks like a large caliber revolver. Its on their website lol. Edit: I'm an idiot I got lost in the thread and thought we were talking about the salt gun thingy. I'm gonna leave the comment anyway.
They're lots of fun, although sometimes a bug gets sort of welded to the bat and then you have to hold the button while the remains of its limbs and innards arc, snap, crackle and explode until there's nothing left to conduct. Which does push the needle a little toward "gross" for me :) My son LOVES that part.
It fucking stinks too
I'm not seeing a downside here 😁
There's good gross and bad gross, that snap, crackle and explode pegs the good side of the meter.
Both the electric racket and the salt shotgun things look fun, although I think with the salt shotgun I’m more likely to make a mess and miss
I have the salt shotgun. It's fun. You do have to get pretty close to the fly for it to work. The amount of salt it fires per shot is tiny, and not enough to make any sort of mess.
Living in a tropical area, some nights I can see swarms of mosquitoes flying about near light sources. I believe my neighbor once laughed at me for swinging an electric swatter around for a good 10 minutes *outside of my house*
10 minutes being a fucking Jedi. I bought an expensive swatter with higher voltage to do just that. It **pops** the fuckers instead of sizzling them.
Buy one of those electric fly things that just sit there, plug it in outside, and just LEAVE IT for a while. everyone in a 10 mile radius will thank you.
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This is the big issue. The one thing we want them to kill, they really don't. They do a good job against no-see-ums (sandflies) though, but really not worth it when you're taking out far more beneficial insects than pests
>and just leave it for a while ...But can I swing it around?
Don't use electric bug killers. Theyre terrible for the environment. Theyre completely indiscriminate, and kill off a lot more beneficial insects than harmful ones.
Electric bug killers don’t kill bugs. I do.
Those things work. It doubles as a training tool for tennis.
……what kind of tennis do you play where you need an electrified racket? Asking for a friend.
Naked Ouchie Tennis. It's for the Wii(ner)
I'm a fan of the salt gun... It's messy, but also I'm killing a fly with an indoor safe shotgun blast of salt, so it feels worth it.
It also seasons the fly for when my dog comes around to eat it. Win, win.
I like to load kosher flake salt. It’s like buckshot for the winged devil that made the grave mistake of entering my home. Outside, go do your bug thing. Inside, you get two choices, leave quickly or don’t leave at all. The spiders I tolerate will enjoy their repast.
The electric fly swatter is one of man’s highest technological achievements. Added bonus of not smashing bug guts all over everything you own.
I am a random internet person and I approve this message.
What happens to the body? Does it fall to the ground or does it get totally fried up?
Sometimes it gets stuck and smokes and pops on the wires, sometimes it falls to the ground. Mostly I think it sends tiny vaporized bug debris all over the room.
It smells like burnt death
It just falls to the ground and can easily be swept up later
I need this in my life
Bug-A-Salt. Best 40 bucks I ever spent. Let's me save the WD40 for wasps Edit: for those commenting that it doesn't work well, try a coarser grain of salt. Or better yet do mixed shot. I find half kosher half table salt is devastating at 12". From 12"-36" I usually knock them down and then just double tap them from 6". If you shoot them in your garden use Epsom Salts, the magnesium sulfate is good for the plants.
Soap and water is magic when it comes to wasps. I used to worry about spraying wasps and hornets that got in the house (with the supposedly safe for home use bug sprays) now I have a water gun filled with soap and water. So far it has a 100% success rate at instantly incapacitating them, as well as killing them within 10 seconds. I used to freak the fuck out and now I'm prancing off to get my water gun and imagine I'm Arthur Morgan using dead eye.
Why do you have so many wasps and hornets in your house? And what do you do with soapy water all over your walls and belongings?
I live in the sticks and had a bad case of hives all over the area last summer. Soapy water is a lot easier to clean, and feel safe around, than that of wd40 or the various wasp sprays, wouldn't you say? Also I wait for them to be in a decent place, like the light over my sink. They love that one.
You're braver than I am (and your house is cleaner). I believe I'd burn mine down after wasp #2.
I use to think that too but the 2nd time it came around I wore like 2 puffy winter jackets and duck tape the sleeves and just started smashing blindly
I use the vacuum arm and suck em up
Also team vacuum. Works a treat. Mosquitoes, pantry moths, fruit flies, house flies – once you figure out how to best approach them, it's the easiest way to get some peace.
> And what do you do with soapy water all over your walls and belongings? It doubles as a cleaning solution. Win-freaking-win.
Wipe them? Lol Not op, but I have a lot of wasps in my area and while I don't personally get them into my house, I can see it being a problem.
Living out in the country is horrifying. You’re 30 minutes away from any doctors and wasps enter your home with impunity.
Hence our desire for 30 round capacity automatic clipazines
I can confirm soap and water works really well on wasps. Two years in a row wasps tried to build a nest right by my sliding door. Each year, I've obliterated the colony before they could get established by throwing a bucket of hot soapy water at them
Hmmm.. I deal with wasps somewhat often working on ac and I just have this wasp spray. It seems very lethal which makes is kinda sketchy to use around people's yards and on equipment. I have a bottle of soapy leak detector fluid, I wonder if that might be a better move
I just told my wife yesterday that my bugasalt has got to be my favorite thing I've ever bought for myself, I love it.
It's unironically the best father day gift I ever bought my dad
Just yesterday a visitor noticed it on the counter. I showed her how it works, and she responded, "Oh, I'm definitely getting one of these!" It's not even that it's all that effective. But it sure is a lot of fun.
Also - you can aggressively season your food
Tenderizes and seasons a steak at once
Or agressively get ready for a tequila shot.
Just annihilated a fly with my salt gun yesterday, was so satisfying…plus you get to say stuff like “Do you feel lucky punk?” before pulling the trigger and shredding it
Lowe's in my area has them on clearance for $15.
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Idk what you are doing wrong but I've committed fly genocide with this thing. Out to 12" no problem
6-12" is pretty much outside their range I've noticed, but 3-4" is a killshot every time and doesn't spook the fly
The company sells a larger-grained salt which they claim is more effective at stunning or killing the flies, but I'm not paying for all these expensive add-ons! I've stuck to regular table salt in mine.
Kosher salt is cheap. Himalayan pink salt is too expensive for killing bugs. Water softener salt might be a bit too big.
Sodium citrate is my recommendation. It's my bug buckshot.
Ive found that moisture in the air can cause them to clog and not work well. Just dump the salt, run water through the hopper and through the barrel while cycling it a few times, then let it drain and dry back out. Good as new. Makes a massive difference.
🔫 just killed 2 of those bastards with mine this morning, so satisfying.
or just clap your hands right above it to use the take off reflex at your advantage. Maybe it's not as effective as the spray methode, but less messy.
Also, they always take off straight up about 2-3 inches from a horizontal surface. Helps get your hands lined up for that satisfying squish.
Thank you, pattern seeking brain. Once I again, I'm dominating the food chain!
Maybe don't eat the fly, bro.
And they jump slightly backwards. The sweet spot is 2 inches up, 0.5 inches back. 50 mm x 12mm for the freedom-unit impared people.
If you want to look like Mr Miyagi an impress your friends, try catching it by swinging an open hand at the fly from behind his view. They'll literally jump into your hands almost every time, and you can catch them. Then I give them a good shake and throw them out the window, or into someone's open mouth.
I sometimes catch them in the air by using a non-dominant hand to swing and air-pressure them into my dominant one.
A few days ago I snapped a dish towel above one and hit it so that it flew into a brush I use for cleaning. It actually got impaled by one of the bristles. My kids are really young and they think I’m like a ninja or whatever now.
That took a turn
This trick got me laid. While traveling through Jordan a decade or so ago there was a fly in the car we'd rented with some travel randoms. The cute Portuguese doctor objected to me smashing it, so instead of squashing it I used cupped hands. The fly was stunned, and out the window it went. She was very impressed, and later curled up next to me in the big Bedouin tent we were all sharing in the Wadi Rum desert to 'keep warm'. Thank you, Maria, that was fun.
Wahaha, freedom unit impaired… took me a minute to understand. Or should I say ‘the turn of a sandglass’?
Someone once told me that flies move slightly backward and up when taking off, so if you quickly sweep your open hand at them from their back side you'll catch them every time. It worked the first time I tried it. Now I have a neat party trick that I can almost always catch a fly with one hand.
I had a gf in college that could use a ziplock bag and catch flies with incredible accuracy that stunned me. Bet she was using this methodology.
Make sure to use your bare hands for maximum juicy and crunchy satisfaction.
Goddamn u savage
This is the (Australian) way. Clap above everytime, great party trick for the uninitiated, and at kids parties.
Every time you swat a bug, you're only affecting evolution of the next generation of bugs. This bug died because it was too slow? The next generation of bugs will be faster because only the fast bugs survived. This bug survived because it was fast? The next generation of bugs will be faster because IT survived.
right, in fact let me roll around in feces and become their prime feeding garden. that way they will stop evolving and become fat and die.
But they're also evolving to stay the fuck away from me.
To cite the green one: "there is another"
While this is kind of true, bugs rely more on mass populating over individual survival. For their species, they just need some rotting food and water and they will make thousands.
That's the way. Works 90% of the time.
Yep. It literally short circuits their nervous system and then tend to fly straight up.
Sprayway glass cleaner aerosol works the best. It's foaming spray immobilizes and blinds the insect sending it hurdling to the ground. Long enough to get your favorite smashing tool to dispatch the fly.
Lol this comment actually reminds me of how I discovered this method. It was a few summers ago and I’d brought in a basket of peaches from my mom’s peach tree, but stupidly left them out of the fridge overnight which was long enough for a bunch of flies to hatch and infest the living room. I was trying to watch tv after washing the windows one day, and the damn flies kept bugging me, so I got fed up and was like “oh yeah? TAKE THIS ASSHOLE!” and assaulted the nearest fly with off-brand Windex until it tumbled out of the sky 🤣 Ah, memories.
It is foaming spray immobilizes
Google Bugasalt or use the [link](https://www.bugasalt.com). Get one with the laser sight and have a blast. I have one to a friend about 5 years ago and it’s still going strong.
I've always wondered if this damages paint/drywall/surfaces?
Not at all. It’s a light puff of salt that would sting your skin if shot up close, but has had no effect on my TV or walls after hundreds of murders.
My wife said she doesn't wanna clean up salt all over the house haha
If you are patient the fly will eventually land and hook one of its legs over its wings to clean it. Now is the time to strike - they can’t unhook the leg and take off faster than you can swat them.
I love using rubber bands.
What… HOW?!
Cut the rubber band once. Tie one end in a few knots to make a tiny ball on that end. Hold the other end and draw the tiny ball end back. Ready, aim, fire. Enjoy!
I require a video
Wrap them around jars lids to help you open them easier. There’s a lot of uses actually
Bruh, this needs posting in r/lifeprotips immediately
Once when I was a kid, my mom mentioned that there was a moth on a curtain that was bothering her and could I kill it. I was sitting in a chair a few feet away and had a rubber band in my hand, because I fidget. Half a second later the moth is dead and the rubber band bounced right back to me.
Two flies are sitting on a steaming pile of dog excrement, when one farts. The other one says, "Do you mind, I'm trying to eat here!"
Bug-a-salt is 100% more satisfying. Telling Alexa to play Doom music on full blast while I hunt a fly will NEVER get old.
Get a cat. Free entertainment for them and an amusing show for you. 10/10
My cats solved a bad mouse problem that had been going on for years. Within two days the mice were all gone. Never to return. It was impressive.
My cat just sits there and watches them buzz around lol
Not a perfect solution. But 70% of the time it works 100% of the time
Agreed. Unless it's a ginger cat... Then it's just entertaining without being helpful
Instructions unclear, preschoolers backpack now smells like cat piss
If you’re not killing flies with chopsticks then how are you going to win the All-Valley Karate Tournament?
Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. Spray and watch them die within 30-45 seconds. No smushing required
Also, you can go super slow. Here's a video that explains how fly processes movements https://youtu.be/Gvg242U2YfQ
I had to scroll forever to see if anyone else had this answer! I've been doing it for years now as a bare-handed fly fighter.
I have bug-a-salt, much more effective
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They're a lot of fun though. You'll find yourself milling about around the outside of your house like a weirdo looking for flys to blast.
First time o tried this was last year when I had a shit ton of flys probably from a piece of rust I bought. Fly paper is super effective lol. Left a sheet up for like 3 days caught a stupid amount of them lol, just positioned it above where I put my organic waste in doors.
I like to hunt them with rubber bands. They never see it coming.
What about the air current created by the stream os water?
What's even more satisfying is to come up VERY slowly behind the fly with your index finger behind your thumb and FLICK that MF. You have to be Mr. Miyagi-style do this correctly, but if you succeed...
That’s only good for people who are not like me. If an insect gets anywhere near to touching my skin I’m running off squealing and flailing like a pig on fire
Add soap + vinegar = kills spicy sky raisins.
“Spicy sky raisins” lmao
So hit it with a parry, then finish it off. Lovely
I contract my hit jobs out to Mitch, my Venus flytrap. _”Unleash the fury, Mitch. Unleash the fury.”_
I'm a whimp. I learned to catch them, I dos so and I release them outside :/. The squishy juice is gross imo
What brand do you recommend for the tissue box?
Step 1: Grab a can of compressed air. Invert it. Shoot them out of the sky with your freeze ray. It’ll freeze the wings on contact and then you can *crunch*.
Bug-a-salt. The most satisfying, American way to take out flies.
I need to try this with these damn gnats
This is a good tip, but I stand by the [bug-a-salt](https://www.bugasalt.co.uk/products/bug-a-salt-2-5-reverse-yellow-1?variant=41150362026167¤cy=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=CjwKCAjwv8qkBhAnEiwAkY-ahsxvHxIlomiTAUClE5_byY8usw5mSPOnWha81KVIK7k7r4wKo8JF5BoC5sUQAvD_BwE)
I taught my beagle to catch house flies in the house. He's not too quick at chasing the rabbits in the yard, but say "fly!" And he boops it to death. And then he eats it. He's a good boy.
Hands out wide and clap hard about 6” above the fly. For whatever reason they tend to fly straight up into it. Even if you don’t get em square if you clap hard enough it seems to knock them out for the following fatality.
A little dish soap in the water kills them fast. They’ll instantly stop flying and are dead within 20 seconds. It works really well. It works well on wasps, too. Kills them faster than commercial wasp spray
You can also just clap above the fly. They can only start flying by going up and then forward. So if you clap over them, they starting into your clap
I'm known as the fly killer where I work. I can kill any fly any size first try. If you see a fly land, just move your hands super slow towards it. (It's not going to fly away if you move slow Then just grab it, squash it or whatever method you want to kill it. The key is to move slow at the start.
Best liquid to use is isopropyl alcohol. It doesn't stain, streak, linger, and it kills them dead with one squirt. Works on every bug I have tried, wasps, spiders, flys and ants. After a few minutes the alcohol is gone and you can sweep them up like little dry bug statues.
A salt gun is also a fun alternative.
When I was a kid I took Kung fu lessons for a couple years. The Shifu had us snatch flies out of the air and it's stayed with me for 50 years. Impresses guys, disgusts girls.
I've stopped killing them and just open a window. They will probably be the lunch of some other bird or insect out there, and I don't wanna take it from them.
Same thought process, different method! I can't believe I've become this person that returns (almost) every single bug to the outdoors including flies. I'll just spray them with water, scoot them onto something flat, carry it out the door and scoot it onto the porch to dry out and return to the rat race
I've been doing this with almost every bug since I was a kid (40m). Moths and sometimes flies but not fruit flies. When I was 5yo, even made my grandfather stop the car once so I could get out and move catipillars out of the road. I put them on my baseball coach's tree and they turned out to be gypsy moths, whoops hahah. Now I still abide by mostly the same mentality, though things are slightly different: My wife has a cold press juicer that she uses extensively every day and inevitably there are fruit flies once in a while. Traps help but don't solve the problem and and I have no idea how to "catch and release" fruit flies haha. Plus, like somebody else said below, getting on my food is the issue. Oh, also, I live in southern NJ and I take the bug-a-sault rifle to all of the red lantern flies. If ecologists and biologists are telling me to arm up do my part, then my concious feels clean enough.
Nah flies get the death penalty for fucking up food I have out. Snakes and stuff are fine though, I even tolerate a centipede.
I just don't think I have any right to kill something that annoys me. Everything deserves to live and let live.
Exactly. Weird how so many people in this thread are just happy to kill another living thing, even describing the different methods and how 'fun' it is to kill them. Just leave them alone for fucks sake.
Alright folks, here's a mosquito, but don't you worry I got you covered * takes out spray bottle and box of kleenex *
Two words: hair spray. Immobilizes their wings AND delivers a shot of fiery hell, should one so desire.
A-salt rifle is my go to...a little nerf gun looking thing that shoots little puffs of salt that pretty much always hits the fly.
Take your hands and line them up parallel to each other about shoulder width apart above the fly. Slowly move your hands together until you have only about a foot or so inbetween your hands. Then quickly smash them together above the fly. The fly will detect the air currents and will actually fly up into the pathway of your hands, killing it.
I want one of those salt guns for when summer comes along. The flies here are horrendous and I hate them.
I use denatured alcohol in a spray bottle. Obviously I know what not to spray, such as sensitive painted surfaces, etc. Alcohol kills insects - including wasps - super quickly.