[Author Note… This information came from an RVer we met while waiting for service on our RV. My sincere apologies for not remembering his name. Just know that his process worked.]
We had been in service for several days and the customer “lounge” (a very nice, very clean, and new—less than one month old—waiting area) became literally infested with flies one day—just common house flies. We showed up in the morning and the flies were already there. There was no apparent reason why this happened (no trash, spills, food, or anything laying around or out of place). Each of the four ceiling lights probably had 20–30 flies on it. Then we found out it would take a few hours to get pest control out there to deal with the problem, however, no one wanted to sit in a room full of chemical spray after pest control left. Also, we couldn’t sit in our coaches because they were in service, so, what to do?
One fellow said he had been a serious big-boater (think “yacht” here) for years and the boaters had a technique to get rid of flies on the ceiling. He explained that flies that land on the ceiling (or in our case, on the light fixtures) were upside down and had to literally let go, drop, and turn over (turn right side up) to fly. (Note, that I, and all the other people, took his word on this as a fly is too fast for us to actually see this maneuver.) He also explained that boaters usually just caught these flies and threw them out. That sounded a bit strange but we listened.
He went to his coach, got a paper cup, put a drop of liquid soap in it, nearly filled it with water, brought it back into our waiting room (where the flies were gathered), and then simply lifted up that cup of soapy water so that the top of the cup would be close to and directly under a fly. When the cup got close, that fly would sort of drop (I guess trying to turn over to fly), hit the soapy water, and end up caught in the liquid in the cup! It worked! It really worked!!!
As a point of pride and to prove there was no “slight of hand” in this, a bit later, the man dumped the cup of water outside and counted 42 flies that he had caught.
[Author Note… If the person with the cup trick reads this, contact me at…
I’ll be happy to give you the credit for your great hint.]