Rejuvenation Projects Blog

What a quiet summer this was. No buzzing. No flies. When the tools were still we heard only the peace of a snug house and the footsteps of a couple of righteous-feeling builders who thought they’d solved the fly problem.

In 2010 the log house was filled with flies who’d moved in the previous year, when the house wasn’t as well sealed up as it is now, and they were fruitful. We hung up fly strips everywhere, swatted flies, shooed flies out. The campaign cut the population but we still had them last winter and into the spring.

One day early in the summer I observed that all  the fly strips were well-studded with fly legs. Legs, with no bodies, and no sign of anything messing with the sticky strips. How odd. In a couple of places there had been evidence of mice, but a mouse couldn’t climb up the log walls and onto a fly strip without getting permanently adhered.

Summer went along buzz-less, and so did early fall. Miller moths accumulated amongst the legs. Yuck. I didn’t take pictures.

One morning John took a closer look at a dark knot on a kitchen log, one that seemed larger than he remembered. “There’s a bat in here!” he hollered, waking the critter from its rest. A ruckus ensued, of flapping plywood scraps and brown wings, and in short order the squatter took up new digs in the great outdoors. Slam! Good riddance!

But guess what now … buzz!

Rejuvenation's Drake bat light. Customer service representative Andrea says it's "no bother", presumably meaning that it doesn't poop. But does it catch flies?

For what it’s worth, we’ve had the best luck with Catchmaster fly strips (ribbons).