<p>The ants thread inspired me to post about my housefly invasion. Over the past few days we’ve been finding dozens of HUGE flies inside the house. These are really large black flies, about the size of horseflies. I don’t know where they’re getting in - we haven’t been leaving doors open or anything. These flies don’t buzz around a lot. They mostly land on the windows or sliding glass doors and sometimes they land on the ceiling. I can’t imagine where they’re getting in or why. We don’t have any smelly garbage, no dead animals, no livestock :eek: – and they seem to have appeared out of nowhere.</p>
<p>Any ideas about how to get rid of them? Does flypaper work? I don’t really want to spray anything because I’m kind of sensitive to the chemicals, plus I have a parakeet who I don’t want to have exposed to the spray.</p>
<p>Are you sure they are flies? I mean, I don’t know what else they would be, but do they look like something you have seen outside before?? Can you close off rooms (or at least some rooms) to maybe get an idea of where they are coming in? For instance if you close off the kitchen and there are still a bunch there, maybe the kitchen is the entryway.</p>
<p>May sound weird, but you didn’t cook brussel sprouts did you??? Seriously, a couple of weeks ago I decided to roast some brussel sprouts in the oven. The house was closed up because of the air conditioning. BAD IDEA! Not only did the house SMELL to high heaven, but the smell must have attracted every fly within a mile radius of our house. For the next 3 hours, we literally, swatted 50 flies or more. It was disgusting! We searched online for “brussel sprouts and flies” and sure the smell can attract flies! The only place I could figure out they were coming from was our large walk-up attic. Our house was built in 1925 and has a couple of half circle windows which are vented and flies do sometimes get in the attic.</p>
<p>My husband is visiting his mother and he just told me that her house has dozens of flies in it, too. He has no idea where they are coming from. I’d appreciate any ideas for getting rid of them also.</p>
<p>Okay, this is too weird. Our house has had a sudden invasion of flies and no doors were left open. My son just spent the last half hour killing them. I am in a completely different part of the country than the rest of you (west coast.) Maybe it’s a plague.</p>
<p>No brussels sprouts or any other strong-smelling food, so it’s not that. There’s really no way to close off any rooms other than bedrooms, either. The only possible place these things can be coming in from is through the A/C ceiling vents. There are just too many to have flown in through an open door. </p>
<p>In the past we’ve occasionally seen one or two of these big flies in the house, but we kill them and don’t see them again for maybe 6-8 months. This is different. Today I counted 11 of them in one room and killed 8 more in various places around the house. Wasn’t there something like this in the Amityville Horror?</p>
<p>hate to even bring it up but perhaps there is a dead critter somewhere inside the house (walls, attic etc)?</p>
<p>…just saw, OP did not think it was a dead animal. We’ve had this happen a few time and in each case it turned out to be a dead mouse or chipmunk somewhere in the walls</p>
<p>We had three days of a fly invasion a few weeks ago. It was suggested to me that they weren’t actually house flies, but rather cluster flies. (I think it was the wrong time of year for them, but they were slow moving and did congregate on windows.) We killed dozens of them before discovering that they were actually happy to leave the house. Opening windows and doors got rid of most of them. I hung some fly paper in the kitchen, but by the time I got around to it, most of the flies were gone as quickly as they had appeared.</p>
<p>Rather disgusting, but scanmom may be correct in that a dead animal is nearby. It sounds like you could have blow-flies which lay their eggs in animal carcasses. Keep killing the flies and they should dissipate in a week or so. You may never locate the carcass, but it should decompose enough to not attract flies very shortly.</p>
<p>I had a cluster fly problem, they totally covered the windows is my garage and my ornamental windows - YUK!!! I had to spray around the perimeter of the house since they lay their eggs under ground. They have not come back since. Hopefully this is not your problem, but any pest company could check it out and let you know.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t necessarily notice. We had two dead mice in the bottom of a garbage can in Vermont. I didn’t smell them until I took out the garbage. They were under the bag.</p>
<p>Fly paper works really well. It’s kind of gross though - sometimes flies will buzz when they hit it and that’s annoying. Hang them out of the way so people don’t bump into them. It’s nasty when they get caught in your hair.</p>
<p>How about a garden? If you are growing veggies close to the house that could be attracting them.</p>
<p>Justamom, no garden nearby, either, so it isn’t that. </p>
<p>But after a trip to Home Depot this morning, I now have fly traps and flypaper strips hanging all around the house. Not exactly an attractive look for the family room but we aren’t expecting guests anytime soon. If this works, it’ll be worth it. Haven’t caught any on the flypaper yet but I have killed another 9 or 10 of the little buggers myself by slapping at 'em with a towel!</p>
<p>Is there a farm nearby? Even within a half a mile sometimes fly infestations infect houses. I would definitely checks with your neighbors too.
That said - I have had more flies in my house this summer than any I remember in recent history. Maybe it’s a bad year for flies.</p>
<p>We have been hit with the flies as well in the Midwest. I have covered garbage and a spotless kitchen right now. so I can’t figure out what theyare living on. The are all large, so they don’t appear to have been hatched in the house. I have been hangig strips as well. Did CC uncover a hidden plague? Here I have been for a couple of days wondering what is happening. It doesn’t stop the flies, but I feel a little better knowing that I am not alone.</p>