Flue Flies

By Aaron N. Fleischer, November, 1957, whose legacy is carried on today by the Fleischer family as owners of Pestex in Framingham, Mass.

“Recently I was called out to inspect a home for green bottle flies. The second floor apartment of the two-family house was loaded with them, but the first floor had none, despite the fact that many berry-producing bushes on the ground level were attracting great numbers of the pests. And two hours of crawling around in an unfinished attic above the infested apartment failed to yield any evidence of decaying organic material in which the flies breed.

Still puzzled over the source of fly attraction, I sold the customer some Diazinon for spraying the shrubbery around the house and the window-sills of the infested apartment. But . . . the flies persisted.

Several days later when I revisited the apartment, the customer made an offhand remark that his gas bill for the preceding month was double the normal amount. Then I got a hunch. Possibly the flies were entering his home from the outside by coming down the flue of his gas stove. I put a plastic bag over the flue and, sure enough, trapped several flies. A closer inspection of his stove revealed a small gas leak just inside it.

Illuminating gas is scented with a slight onion smell and this escaping from his stove was sufficient to attract green bottle flies into the home in great numbers. With the gas leak fixed, the flies disappeared.”

Note: This article serves as a reference within PMP’s January issue, included in the “Pest Research” section by Dr. Hanif Gulmahamad.