3:00 snapshot #1232: Weird pest control products

Weird Pest Control Products is surely someone's favorite segment on this blog, un-revisited since 2010 but now it's back. This thing, the "Trapple," was a freebie from the NEPMA conference. It's a fruit fly trap shaped like an apple--HOW CUTE IS THAT. Alas, no pest control professional recommends fruit fly traps with a straight face, since you can catch the adults all day long, while new larvae hatch from whatever pile of filth and rotten banana peels and old beer bottles are left in place. Like all fly problems, the solution to fruit fly problems is to clean the place up and get rid of breeding space. Sometimes that means changing your habits, REALLY cleaning a trash barrel, or scrubbing the gunk out of a drain pipe, but fail to do that then you will continue to breed fruit flies. Some will go to your jar of vinegar, or your fruit flavored sticky tape, or your plastic apple, but there will always be at least two that get it on and lay some eggs before drowning in your dilute apple juice/white wine/whatever it all works about the same.

I wouldn't make fun of this product (it WAS given to me for free) but for the ludicrous claim on the package: "Create an insect-free environment!" Maybe it's not really a claim, but a fantasy in which the manufacturer hopes the consumer will indulge. Not me--I'm not a big fan of fruit flies, but an insect-free environment would be a human-free environment shortly thereafter.