Flies on Canisius campus

Throughout the past few weeks, a large number of flies have called the tunnels underneath Canisius College home, creating a very noticeable presence on the campus.

The flies started as a relatively small bunch, but as the weeks have gone on, it is evident that the population has continued to grow. Now, in some clubrooms, one may have flies crawling all over them as they sit and work. The flies are found throughout the tunnels, in not just the clubrooms but the bathrooms as well.

The school is aware of the fly problem. Timothy Balkin, the vice president for business and finance, said that the college called in exterminators twice to try to deal with the problem. Additionally, fly traps have been put in place around the affected areas. The Griffin’s club room has acquired a venus fly trap.

Balkin also mentioned that drain flies have been coming into the school through the piping of the bathrooms in the lower level of the student center. He said that those pipes were recently treated as of Wednesday. Drain flies are a very common type of fly to appear in households or places where drainage is used. While they do not pose any actual danger to people and are very small, they can be a persistent nuisance, as felt by Canisius students through the past few weeks. Also, the college has looked at the dining hall to see if the flies had made their way there, and they determined, as of this week, that they were not.

The school is still not entirely sure what exactly the source of the flies is, saying that all they can do at this point is speculate. What is not speculation, however, is that the flies exist and that there are a lot of them. Balkin mentioned that the Canisius facilities team is still working on addressing the problem, so while the flies continue to be a nuisance, better days may be ahead.