Flies in the library, big ones. Ideas?

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Why are people allowed to eat in the library? If I had tried that when I was in college, I would have been very firmly "asked" to leave. Bugs love remnants of human foods, and many of them can subsist on leather, vellum, paper, glues, etc. Sorry to be a wet blanket in an entertaining thread, but our university's library had some really strict (and entirely understandable) rules and it's disappointing to see such disrespect for the real books in such a repository.
 
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turbo said:
Why are people allowed to eat in the library? If I had tried that when I was in college, I would have been very firmly "asked" to leave. Bugs love remnants of human foods, and many of them can subsist on leather, vellum, paper, glues, etc. Sorry to be a wet blanket in an entertaining thread, but our university's library had some really strict (and entirely understandable) rules and it's disappointing to see such disrespect for the real books in such a repository.

There are no books on the first floor of our library, which is where all the computing/eating happens.
 
Office_Shredder said:
I've heard that flies can sense the change in air pressure from a hand moving rapidly towards them and get out of the way from that, so it's easier to kill them by moving your hand (or crushing device) slowly toward them until you're just about touching them
It's not so much that they can sense it but they do ride it.

This is why effective flyswatters are heavily perforated.
 
ArcanaNoir said:
There are no books on the first floor of our library, which is where all the computing/eating happens.
Bugs can crawl, fly, and reproduce and end up in the stacks, eating valuable old books. There is no way to effectively ban the bugs from the upper levels of the library without making those levels inaccessible to the students.
 
DaveC426913 said:
It's not so much that they can sense it but they do ride it.

This is why effective flyswatters are heavily perforated.

It must feel like surfing, to the fly.
 
turbo said:
Bugs can crawl, fly, and reproduce and end up in the stacks, eating valuable old books. There is no way to effectively ban the bugs from the upper levels of the library without making those levels inaccessible to the students.

Maybe not completely, but we don't have any flies anyway :) I mostly meant we weren't getting our smudgy food hands all over books.