I hate houseflies. Seriously. I hate houseflies with the fiery anger of 1,000 burning supernovas. If I were making a Top 10 list of things I hate, houseflies would take a minimum of four spots. If Jeff Goldblum tried to strike up a conversation with me, I’d give him a 90-minute lecture on his role in sensationalizing teleportation technology and then I would convince him to help me egg Eric Stoltz’s house.

Speaking directly to our CheckOut readers in the insect community for a moment…Bees? We may not hang out often, but I appreciate all that sweet pollination. The flowers are looking great this year! Spiders? You know, there’s a standing catch and release policy for your kind in my place. Thanks for all the help keeping bugs away! Tracker-jackers? Amazing job helping Katniss get her hands on that bow. In my opinion, you are truly the unsung heroes of the Hunger Games.

…Flies? You filthy disease carriers are a pox on my home. I will end your already insanely short life if you dare to enter my residence.

Enter the Bug-A-Salt

This quirky tool was a recent gift from my fiancée, likely because she was tired of watching me run around our apartment wildly swinging a flyswatter and wanted a new source of entertainment. Molded out of tough plastic, the Bug-A-Salt can be loaded with ordinary table salt in order to shoot flies right out of the air. With a design similar to a shotgun, you rack the slide once. This activates the safety switch and raises the sight on the top of the Bug-A-Salt. After clicking the safety into place, you simply pull the trigger to fire a blast of salt at the housefly.

When it comes to range, you really need to be within a couple feet of the housefly for the salt spread to be effective. Any farther back and the fly will happily zip away. You also need to be careful to avoid the eyes and skin of anyone else around you. While the salt blast isn’t particularly painful on the skin, getting hit in the eyes would be quite irritating and potentially harmful. This is definitely not a toy for children to play with.

Regarding build quality, I was really surprised how sturdy and solid the Bug-A-Salt feels. The weight is balanced and you can feel a very slight kickback when pulling the trigger. I’ve fired it about 50 to 100 times at this point and it’s still going strong. In addition, I’ve only had to add more salt one time so far. The salt chamber at the top of the Bug-A-Salt holds enough salt for about 50 shots.

But Does It Work?

Sadly, it’s not an efficient tool for housefly disposal when compared to the traditional flyswatter. Nearly 9 times out of 10 during my testing, the fly would fall to the floor, recover over the next couple seconds, then buzz away to another part of the room. I’ve tried firing from all sorts of distances, but nothing seems to actually take out the housefly. The main issue is that the fly usually recovers too quickly to dispose of it. In addition, the body of the fly often gets blasted to another part of the room making it easy to lose. There’s also the added bonus of finding salt everywhere all over the apartment after chasing a particularly nasty housefly.

But Is It Fun?

Without a doubt. It’s completely over-the-top and ostentatious, but offers sweet payback for all the annoying grief that flies have caused me over the years. All in all, the Bug-A-Salt is a great concept, but doesn’t work very well for actually killing flies. If you’re looking to take down houseflies immediately, a heavy-duty flyswatter will be more effective than the Bug-A-Salt. And if you’re feeling truly adventurous, I recommend the handheld bug zapper.

Bug-A-Salt Review