This will be my claim to fame and it’s not even my idea. Denise came up with it and I took all the credit. I’ll make a million dollars off the invention, then she’ll take me to court, sue me, get paid, and I’ll die alone and penniless in a pauper’s grave. Hopefully one of my bar regulars will remember me and I’ll be buried with a bottle of aged cane spirit, something nice to take on my journey through the underworld. Oh, what a story that would make. Only a little bit of rum to last an eternity. Take it all down in one fell swoop or parcel it out one sip at a time?

Before we begin, a quick ode to the fruit fly. I don’t mind the little suckers so much. I mean, that’s a great way to go. You have to marvel at the way they choose to die, drowning themselves into lakes of booze and wine. It’s a bit sad how we trick them into an early grave when all they want is to be submerged in alcohol. One hand washes the other. Respect.

Where do they come from? Leave a piece of fruit out on your kitchen table in the middle of summer and an hour later you have an infestation until October. Google tells me each one of the fuckers can lay up to 500 eggs at a time and live, not for 24 hours like many of us think but for 40-50 days.

If you’re like me, you’ve tried every technique under the sun to rid your bar of this dreaded scourge. You’ve bought the little plastic apple, you’ve made a makeshift trap with a plastic deli pint and saran wrap, maybe you’ve bought strips and hung them under your shelves. These contraptions either look good and are ineffective or they look horrible and work great.

If only there was some way to combine both effectiveness and style while simultaneously being totally incognito so your bar customers (guests) have no idea you’re killing the swaths of fruit flies infesting your bar. Hmm. Oh wait, here I am with a solution.

Yeah. The insanely expensive, chemical laden Luxardo cherries. Once they’re finished you’ve normally got a good amount of the syrup leftover and unless you’re inundated with Shirley Temples, chances are you just throw it out (it does make for a nice shrub). Well, what you can do is use the jar and the syrup to trick fruit flies into a quick death and no one will know the difference as long as you keep the top of the jar out of view. Now that, my friends, is a true no waste bar program.

Yes, the above jar top looks like it once held Wolverine but those slashes are what allow our enemy access to their own demise. Along with the syrup, you’ll need to add some apple cider vinegar, honey, water, and a drop of dish soap in order to break the surface tension so they have no choice but to drown. Put your clever ruse up on a shelf somewhere and change it out every couple of weeks. There’ll be a crazy slurry of dead carcasses in there.