By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – June 24, 2010 at 09:30AM
Horse flies putting a dent in your enjoyment of your patio and fruit flies taking over your kitchen were as annoying decades ago as they are today. Use these vintage plans to build a premium and extremely effective fly trap.
Apartment Therapy writer Leah Moss was on vacation in Ecuador when she came across the Terminator of fly traps. She writes:
I came across this contraption at a horse farm in Ecuador where the flies are nearly as abundant as the wild flowers. That mountain at the bottom of the cage is the fly accumulation in one week! Thankfully, our own fly problem is not quite so pronounced in DC, but the pesky little things have still been known to ruin many a good outdoor meal, making this simple trap all the more attractive.
The bait (in this case, “dog manure”, but you could use something less offensive like composting scraps) in the trap attracts flies in through the bottom, leading them up through the screen cone and into the cage. Since flies only fly up, they don’t know how to escape through the cone-shaped screen through which they entered. And voila!
As she notes you may not have a fly problem so bad that require building a mini-fridge sized prison for your local fly population but don’t worry. The site where she found plans to build her own fly trap have several variations including the huge one in the photo, a smaller one roughly the size of a paint can, and a mini-model designed to capture fruit flies in your kitchen. Check out the link below for all the vintage plans.