It’s that time of year again when fruit flies spontaneously appear in your kitchen. Where did they come from? How do you make them go away?

Fruit flies or “vinegar flies” (Drosophila melanogaster) love moisture and the vinegar smell of fermenting, rotting fruit. They and their eggs cling to fresh fruits and vegetables. They even squeeze through your screens to get to their goal.

One fruit fly becomes one hundred in a matter of days as we learned to our dismay when they invaded our office in 2012.

On Throw Back Thursday, here’s the story of how we got rid of them: Trapping Very Small Game.

(photo by Kate St. John)