John F. Eldredge wrote:

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:54:33 +0000 (UTC), Cheryl Perkins
wrote:


jmcquown wrote:


Perhaps hanging "fly strips"? I'm not even sure they still sell those. My
parents used to hang them in their garage to keep flies from coming in via
the kitchen door. Flies are annoying.

Sometimes called flypaper, and I think some hardware stores still carry
it. There's a funny story in Pratchett's 'The Unadulterated Cat' about a
cat who stared at the swaying flypaper until he couldn't resist attacking
it...

When I was in Europe, they had a kind of cross between camping mosquito
coils and Glade plug-ins that you could use indoors and supposedly either
repelled or killed small flying insects. Certainly, I wasn't bothered by
mosquitos or flies when I was in houses using these even though they had
no window screens. But I don't think I've seen those particular products
in North America; only the more powerful outdoors versions.


One thing to keep in mind is that, while some forms of flypaper are
basically glue strips, so that the flies remain stuck and die of
starvation, many brands of flypaper have poison mixed in with the
glue. The fly lands on the flypaper and takes off again, but the
poisonous glue sticks to its feet, and the fly ingests the poison when
it licks the glue off of its feet. Back in the 1970s, I remember
hearing warnings that flypaper gave off poisonous fumes as well, but I
don't know the truth of that statement.

But if the cat ate poisoned flies, it might not be very good
for the cat! (One argument against poisoning rats or mice
in an environment that includes a cat.)