A few months ago I conducted a most interesting experiment into the effect of vacuum cleaners on fruit flies. My shared flat in Erlangen had a plague of them due to some rotting onions, so I put a clean bag in the vacuum cleaner and sucked about 20 flies. I then checked and saw that all were dead except for two or three moving very slowly.
My flat in Bochum got some fruit flies this summer, and I did my best to kill them with a vacuum cleaner, but it was difficult to get them all, and it only needs two for them to restart their colony. I spotted a couple of spiders in the corners of the flat, and decided to leave them alive in the hope that they would join in with the fly-killing.
In hindsight this was a mistake, as cobwebs gather dust, and dusty cobwebs give an appearance of decay and neglect to a flat. Today I sucked up the cobwebs and a couple of spiders. I hope they survived: If there are any flies left alive in the dustbag, then they can finish them off.
No comments:
Post a Comment