Buy It And Try It: The Amazing Mobile Bug Zapper
Got bugs? Who else would have more flies than a dairy? Machado Dairy has been in Elk Grove for more than 30 years. They milk cows 24/7.
"About 3300 gallons a day goes out of here," said Elsie Machado, fly killer.
That's a lot of cows, and by default, a lot of bugs.
Kurtis: What's the fly situation like out here?
Elsie: It can be bad. We have any kind of fly you want to know about ever, we've got it.
They use powders, dusts, everything, but it never fails – if you've got cows, you've got flies.
Kurtis: Who does it bother more, you or the cows?
Elsie: Oh, it definitely bothers the cows more.
Kurtis: Have you ever use a flyswatter out here?
Elsie: This is what I use in my house. Ha ha.
Kurtis: Go ahead, hold it. What do you think of it?
Elsie: It's pretty cute.
It's cute, but will it work? We gave Elsie a license to kill bugs. She has the zapper, and I have the low-tech version.
Kurtis: That one flew right through it. I got four, how many you got, Elsie?
Elsie: Zip.
This thing isn't zapping, so we resort to using it to smack the bugs.
Kurtis: What do you think of the electric flyswatter?
Elsie: I think it's a dud.
And I think this calf is trying to tell me what she thinks. The fly-swatter stinks!
Kurtis: What else do you think you could do with that thing?
Elsie: I don't know, play racquetball?
So we left Elsie with her rather haggard low-tech swatter and left the cows to fend for themselves; after all, they do have nature's own flyswatter to work with.
We actually got two of these zappers. One of them didn't work when we took it out of the box. When we came back our promotions department fixed it and it actually works now. We killed one insect in the newsroom but still, it didn't work when it really counted, and the cows are still having to swish away the bugs.
We leave it up to you to decide if it's worth the hassle.
