Black Flag Fly Motel Window Traps

Pesticide-free Black Flag Fly Motel Window Traps has the same riff on the company's old motto, "Flies Check In ... But They Don't Check Out." They also add another claim, "Hides Dead Bugs." Well, it a good thing the latter guarantee is true because the first one is decidedly not.

I bought this product for an outdoor patio area which unfortunately, adjoins where the lidded trashcans are kept. I just wanted something simple to keep the pesky fly population to a minimum and this seemed to be just the ticket. One box contains 4 separate "traps," a term loosely applied to a lightweight triangular-carded space open along the hypotenuse. On the outer side of this "trap" is a small piece of tape that one pulls to expose adhesive with which to hold the trap in the corner of a windowpane or patio door. One side of the inner container is coated with an adhesive that traps flies, gnats and other critters IF AND WHEN they come in contact with it. The opposite interior side of the trap is normal cardboard.

So, let's carry this hotel/motel motif just a wee bit further. First of all, there is absolutely no incentive at all for a fly to want a room at our little fly motel - no alluring odors, no blinking neon "Vacancy" light, no king-sized beds, not even an insect equivalent of an outdoor pool. And, once our prospective fly-customer checks out the room, he's usually free to leave as he has a 50% chance of landing on the non-sticky side. Thus, this company's claim that it "Hides Dead Bugs" is true, or would be, after you kill a fly conventionally with a flyswatter and shake its nasty little corpse into the "trap," hopefully bouncing all or part of the bug off the sticky side of this contraption.

So, save your receipt and return this item as it says on the box "Guaranteed to Work Or Your Money Back." Of course, the box also says that fallacy about flies never leaving too, but we'll leave that to another review.