Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 9:00AM.

It all began, as surprisingly many unfortunate things do, with a banana. Tom loves a morning smoothie, made with blueberries, spinach, strawberries, almond milk, and bananas. All these ingredients do well under refrigeration except bananas. So, just before we set off for our ICW trip, I bought a bunch of the greenest bananas I could find and wrapped them in black breathable cloth, hoping they would last through the anticipated 6 days till we reached Norfolk.

Two days into our trip we ran into 3 days straight of rain and wind which necessitated a prolonged weather hold at a mooring in Solomons. With the damp air and the boat closed up, the bananas ripened rapidly and I began to see a few tiny Drosophila Melanogaster- common fruit flies. This didn’t strike me as cause for alarm. In the marina we’d commonly see one or two buzzing our hanging fruit basket. With fresh air moving through an open boat or the chill air circulating when we used the air-conditioning these few would appear and move on without any action on our part.

The morning we left Solomons, I closed the boat up tight against the wind and spray. We had a choppy windy passage to the Great Wicomico and were happy to drop anchor. When I went below, I realized that we had inadvertently created below deck conditions strikingly similar to those required for a high school biology fruit fly genetics experiment: warmth, damp, jostling, and BANANAS! I stepped into a cloud of tiny, red-eyed floating bugs, like a miniaturized version of Stephen King’s horror story, The Mist.

Concerned, but not yet alarmed, I quickly peeled, sliced, and threw the remaining bananas in the freezer, hoping they might yet be usable and got rid of the peels. I figured this and a few timely blows with the swatter would resolve the matter.

Oh no. For something with a brain the size of a poppy seed these invaders are incredibly tenacious and difficult to eradicate. They float through the air like dust motes, seemingly aimless, until you try to swat them. Then they suddenly display the velocity and evasive capabilities of F22 Raptors. In addition, they are so tiny that they fit through the holes of the fly swatter-even a direct hit is not necessarily fatal. Worst, they are capable of producing hundreds of progeny in 24 hours.

With mild panic taking hold, I washed all the apples, plums, onions, avocados, potatoes, and lemons in a dilute chlorine solution and dried them. The few remaining plums went into the refrigerator. The garlic heads got peeled of their initial papery layer and then were stowed in a clean thick running sock, rubber banded shut. The fruit baskets themselves got the chlorine treatment and the old doilies were discarded.

The washed and dried produce was placed into T-shirts tied into sacks, and the whole magilla was stowed in a breathable fine-weave laundry sack and stowed in the forward salon, where the air flow is from bow to stern. Hoping these goodies were sufficiently treated and hidden, I sought internet advice.

Amazingly, I found that the most helpful and effective measure was the simple fruit fly trap. A bit of vinegar and banana go in the bottom of a tallish container and a home-made paper funnel is placed in the top of the container such that its tip dips deeply into the container but does not extend into the banana/vinegar bait. Any space between container lip and funnel should be sealed (I used tape).

The odor plume from the funnel is irresistible to the little bastards and once they traverse the cone into the fruit bait portion of the trap, they apparently are not smart enough to find their way back up the narrow funnel. Within minutes of setting this up and removing the other attractive produce targets I was gratified to see dozens of the little invaders hovering. Within an hour they were marching down the cone “into the light” like an insectoid zombie army. The internet suggests that the trap be left overnight and then a bit of soap be put into the watery bait to change surface tension such that the flies can’t stay atop the liquid and therefore drown. I must admit that I hastened this process with a squirt of Raid down the funnel once I had bagged a big catch of the pests. Did I smile evilly as I sprayed? Perhaps.

Within 24 hours the body count was massive and only a few bewildered survivors meandered about the boat, perhaps wondering at the disappearance of their comrades. Congratulating myself, I was all confidence as we battened down the boat before leaving Mobjack Bay.

While underway, I stow any plastic-wrapped tortillas, bread wraps and loaves in the microwave to prevent these light items from being tossed around.

Imagine then my horror and chagrin at the end of our passage to Norfolk, (after rejoicing that we’d had nearly 24 hours of a fly-free cabin) when I opened the microwave and a cloud of happy flies emerged. They danced around and easily evaded my fruitlessly (sorry) swinging swatter arm, merrily fleeing like school children at 3pm on the last day before summer vacation.

This was a significant set-back in the campaign, but I can taste victory. The bread containers have been decontaminated, the microwave treated and purged, and the fruit fly trap is in daily operation with maintenance checks. The thickest-skinned produce have been returned to the baskets and have not been attacked.

There are only infrequent sightings of the enemy. I do tend to swat at any small discoloration in the teak and twitch when motes of dust shimmer in the light from a porthole, but I expect these minor insect PTSD symptoms to fade with time.