The legendary compost

This, is the story of the neglected compost that spawned the largest breeding of fruit flies known to the history of this apartment #1203. 

The backstory: My plan was to get some urban composting going as soon as I got here. A colleague has a worm compost project going in her classroom with her 3rd graders, and I was just going to nab some of them for my own vermiculture venture. But alas, her worms died (or the ayi threw them out thinking they were a failed, dirty experiment), and my compost was piling up. 

My secondary intention was to collect it in a 5-gallon container, with a tight lid, and then bury it every week or every other day, if I got ambitious. I just didn't want to be throwing all this organic waste in a dumpster when it could be nourishing and enriching the crappy red-clay soil (not the best composition for encouraging the decomposition process).

So, the compost was molding in the bin under my kitchen sink. Excuse me. OUR kitchen sink. Kari was affected. She couldn't understand why there was such an overabundance of fruit flies... especially within the last week. 

Compost bin under kitchen sink

After coming back from Shanghai with Clara, there were more flies than ever. It was time to take care of this situation once and for all. Just after dusk, with trowels in hand, we took to the ground, scavenging a nice plot that needed nourishment, longing for our fly-filled compost. We found a toad, some hard ground, some bushes, and finally, a soft spot where the grass was bald from this last typhoon season. Perfect. 

Crouching, we dug with the trowels for a while, until I decided it was more efficient just to dig like a dog and excavate more significant amounts of dirt. I was digging like a crazy woman. Was the hole deep enough to fit all my compost? Nope... gotta keep going. Clara gave up and just watched me. I was digging my way to... oh wait, I'm already in China. Back to the other side of the planet then? 

Measly hand shovels

We elevatored upstairs and grabbed the compost bin, which was emanating flies. Literally. We're afraid the elevator security camera caught them seeping out of the bin, and will eventually peg us as culprits. We hurried outside to our hole, dumping the contents of the 5-gallon tub into the ground, and buried it with the freshly-dug earth. Yes, people stopped to watch throughout the process. A grandma doing her nightly calisthenics talked at us as she walked by. Whatever, grandma. We're saving the earth. As we covered the goods, we thought of all the activities that could have been assumed we were working on (nefarious or wholesome): we could be planting a tree, burying a dead animal, hiding incriminating evidence... which was sort of what we were doing. We were the gnat-culprits that polluted the elevator. (though better than people who smoke in the elevator! Talk about polluting the air in a confined space!) 

You know that whole saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar? Yeah, about that... we set out honey and sugar water all over the kitchen, turned all the lights on, and shut the doors. No flies caught. Turned all the lights off. Still only a couple gnats. I think they just fell in by accident. They weren't attracted to the honey (in that spoon in the photo below and only a few gnats in the honey/sugar water and juice cups). 

Clara and I thought we'd had our workout at our hour and a half long dance aerobics class that fated afternoon. But we were in for the jumping, smacking, clapping, whipping, pounding workout of our lives. Never had our eye-hand-fruitfly coordination been so good. We were on a roll, nabbing those bitches. Oh wait. This is a family blog. Sorry. We were just so mad at the darn punk fruit flies. We were mean, fly-catching machines. Our floors and countertops were peppered with the carnage of hundreds, wait no, thousands of fruit fly bodies. Expert fly-killers. Clara started losing her mind, seeing fruit flies that were no longer there.

Fly swatting and smacking extravaganza.

Never again will I neglect to dump the compost.

I will be starting an eco "green" club after school activity at school, and aspire to initiate a compost system for a new garden plot that I've been eyeing with high hopes. Then I can bring all my leftovers there and not worry about having to clandestinely excavate compost graves!

I am happy to report that now, three days later, the apartment is essentially fruit fly free.