Govind D Belgaumkar

• It is common in the city as the season is round the corner; the insects invade public places and houses
• Restaurants, fruit juice centres and bakeries attract them in large numbers
• Air-conditioned rooms are the only places they do not enter
• They are everywhere: A file photo showing flies sitting on tomatoes at a vegetable market in Mangalore.

Mangalore, Oct 10: You stop at your favourite coffee shop taking time off from your work. You have just had a sip. Then you suddenly see a black insect in your coffee. You quickly realise it is a fly.

Many people in Mangalore have experienced this even in the cleanest of restaurants. A swarm of flies sitting on your favourite piece of cake in a bakery in your neighbourhood is common, once the annual “fly season” starts. The season is round the corner, now.

Attraction:

“Since coffee is sweet, flies are attracted to it,” says the manager of a restaurant near Bunts Hostel Circle. “A typical fly, green in colour, usually lands in hot coffee-cups,” he says.

The restaurant has no problem in replacing the coffee. But will the customer come back to us,” he asks.

Houseflies become a part of people’s life for a month or so in most parts of the city. Whether you are washing clothes or having a meal, they will be there haunting you.

Temporary:

Although some pest control agencies claim to offer a solution, Manjapa Adyantaya of Pest Control Technical Services warns that all solutions are temporary. “There is hardly any solution to tackle the menace,” he declares. Restaurants and fruit juice centres may use pest-flashes, electrical equipment that attracts flies and kill them. But no household in the city has tried it.

Pest control agencies:

Adyantaya says pest control is possible, to some extent, around marriage halls and around houses or places where functions are organised. “We cannot assure you that there will be no flies,” he says. They die only by spraying of insecticides. While some them manage to escape, their breeding goes on forever, he says.

The areas which are free from flies are air-conditioned rooms, according to a manager of a restaurant. He says pestflash cannot be used in restaurants because it attracts flies by the dozen, creating a scene.

However, restaurants use pestflash at their fruit juice centres. “The tray of the pestflash has to be cleared frequently.

It fills up every now and then,” he says.

Residents here vouch that Netlon and curtains have been of little help.