Kiss those annoying fruit flies goodbye....

....if you can get your hands on one of the tiny elusive buggers, that is.

Q. -How do you know when a fruit fly farted?
A. - it flies in a straight line.

What I am about to show you is a very cheap, extremely effective, yet simple-stupid, do-it-yourself way, of removing these mini "bastiches" from your home once and for all. Any one who would call a professional to exterminate such a simple bug would have the exterminator laughing all the way to the bank. Yet there is no reason for you to suffer these jerks in your home. This is one extermination you can do easily by yourself.

At first most people think, they have "a" fruit fly and that they are seeing the same one over and over again (as if they had police, fruit fly, facial recognition technology installed in their brain). They all look alike! It's how they sneak up on you and take over your home.

Also another myth heard frequently is "oh, it's just a harmless little fruit fly". Yeah, harmless until they grow into a thundering cloud formation in the middle of your living room blocking your view of American Idol.

Fruit flies are just as dirty and nasty as their larger cousin, the house fly, and carry many of the same disgusting germs. In fact, fruit flies are more versatile than the ordinary housefly when it comes to thriving in your home. Fruit flies will feast, reproduce and poop in sink drains amazingly without drowning, a trick the house fly hasn't mastered. Fruit flies especially love potted house plants, anything or any place that has decaying or moist organic material will attract it. So do yourself a favor and keep a lid on your garbage cans, especially the kitchen can. Besides, "covering your can" ;) makes for positive feng shui in the home -- and garbage is just plain ugly to look at. Also if you have a cat, it will thank you if you remove any solid "land mines" from the kitty litter box on a daily basis and you will be depriving a mess of fruit flies a happy hunting ground.

One more word on prevention: Unless Better Homes and Gardens is gonna do a photo shoot in your home, there is no real reason to keep a bowl of fresh fruit out in the open. This is how you got the hitchhikers home in the first place. They no doubt traveled in with you on that ripe bunch of bananas. If you want an colorful table arrangement, buy flowers. Just ditch them before they begin to rot. Keep fresh fruit under cover or in the fridge. Eat it quickly or ditch it as soon it begins to over-ripen.

Okay, so here's my secret sauce: you no doubt have these items in your home already and if you did have to go out and buy any of all of the ingredients it should cost you no more than three Obama! inflated dollars. You will need a few cheap small plastic containers. It can be a plastic or styrofoam drinking cup or an re-used salad bar container, an old yogurt cup, you get the idea, just rinsed out the container. Next, apple cider vinegar, the low cost store brand will do, save your fancy organic vinegar for your salad dressing. Let me be clear here, do not use white (or clear) vinegar. Next, liquid dish soap, any bargain brand will work. You could use beer in place of the vinegar but most people I know don't love their fruit flies that much. Put about an inch or two of the vinegar in the container(s), add just a drop or two of the liquid soap. That's it, yer done. And so are the little pests, so wave bye-bye. You'll be amazed how many you'll catch with this simple recipe, especially the first set up. Then wash, rinse, repeat. Don't let the containers dry out or you'll be offering organic material for any remainder flies to feast on. For this same reason, flush the spent liquid down the toilet bowl, not down the sink drain.

The soap is the real secret. Fruit flies have the ability to hover over and land on water without falling in, much like mosquitoes can, but the soap makes the water slippery and they slip in and drown. You don't need any fancy store bought or specially designed funnel containers. Do it just like I tell you here. Fruit flies reproduce approximately every 14 days. You should notice that you don't notice them in about a month. In 60 days, they're history.

Now you can enjoy that special bottle of wine without these uninvited guests taking a slurp. And feel free to snore with your mouth full opened without fear of a midnight fruit snack or twelve getting sucked down your gullet.

Next up, an almost similar trick to control backyard mosquitos so you can enjoy that backyard barbeque.