Science Experiment?

A month or two ago I was telling a lady in our church about our abundance of fruit flies. She told me how they took care of the problem at their house, and then proceeded to describe the trap you see in the picture (or something like it). Basically you get some fruit or veggie scraps or anything the flies would like and put them in a jar. Then create a cone out of paper, making the smallest part pretty small. You tape the cone to the jar. What happens is that the flies will go down the cone, attracted to their favorite smells, but they can't get back up!

So finally on Friday morning, annoyed by flies everywhere, I made a trap, using some left over tomato sauce, a lemon piece, and a few cucumber rinds. My evil plan worked! I now have quite a few flies (those little dark spots) and the food is molding nicely.

But by yesterday I started wondering what exactly was going to happen next. I didn't remember that part. I wrote this lady and asked her if the flies would die off by themselves soon or what. She wrote back and said they will NOT die off by themselves (after all, they've got plenty to live off of). In fact, if you want an interesting science experiment, you can wait a week and watch the larvae crawl up the jar and see the little baby flies! But that's not what these people do. No, they microwave them. I never would have thought of that. That kills off all the critters. Then you can put the even more potent smelling mixture back to catch more, and sooner or later empty it and start with fresh stuff.

So I just put it in the microwave and haven't looked at it yet. I don't love fruit flies, but it still seems like a cruel way to exterminate! Maybe they don't feel anything. Perhaps it just reminds me too much of some of the human extermination methods I read or heard about at the Yad Vashem (Holocaust) museum in Jerusalem. But of course these are flies, not people. Okay. I'm going to go check the results of my coldblooded deed. Be right back...

Ughhhhh! I don't see any sign of survivors, so I guess it worked! It actually doesn't smell too bad, so I'm going to put it back out in the hopes of catching more victims. Too bad for them that they're not smart enough to see all the corpses and flee from the coming destruction!