Fruit flies can be attracted from great distances to fruits and sweets, which produce ethanols from the natural breakdown of their sugars. They’ll slip into any home to get to the source of that ethanol, to feed and lay their eggs on it.
When these fruits and sweets have been left out for your spirits, this can get annoying.
It seems counterproductive to cover the offerings, because it adds a challenge for your spirits to get to it. But it’s an affront to let the flies get to the offerings before the spirits can. And of course, fruit flies aren’t the only vermin that might get attracted.
So how do you effectively leave out offerings for your spirits?
Offerings should be left out for only 24 hours. It’s rare for bugs to fill an offering in 24 hours, so if you should find insects within those 24 hours you can read that as an omen.
Have you considered placing some type of netting over the fruit?
It would keep those pesty gnats and fruit flies out of there but would not make the fruit impossible for a spirit to get to. I imagine they could easily drain the fruit with a net over top because it’s not a completely solid barrier.
My nan used to have muslin cloths to cover jugs and bowls that had small weights round to hold the edges down, some were quite attractive, using glass beads and fancy stitching. If it’s a serious problems, you could try that.
Here’s an example I found online so you can see the general idea:
Uh oh. I’ve been leaving out offerings for as long as it takes for spirits to take all of its essences…
That said, I found two fruit flies within about 4 hours of leaving out fresh offerings. They might or might not have been floating around my home prior. Regardless, they found the food. What is the message to be had by seeing two fruit flies on an offering?
Yup. I’ve got this cooking mesh that is made to be a splatter guard (comes in handy when cooking with oil) and it guards fruits well too. Unfortunately, fruit flies will just lay their eggs on top of that. Gross.
[quote=“Lady Eva, post:4, topic:5948”]My nan used to have muslin cloths to cover jugs and bowls that had small weights round to hold the edges down, some were quite attractive, using glass beads and fancy stitching.
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That is a cute muslin bowl cloth. I’ve never seen those before.
I like the idea of using some sort of cloth or netting. Maybe I just need to find a netting with the right size mesh, or one of a material that bugs dislike. I’ve got some coffee filters, which I’m about to try next. Thanks everyone for the ideas!
You could spray the fruit with repellent. A little deet shouldn’t hurt a spirit.
the Problem is the spirit could view it as you trying to poison it. There are strict protocols to properly feeding spirits in various traditions.