fleas

Factual Questions
1

does anyone know a good way to get rid of fleas, or can offer me any hope?

we just bought a house. amazingly, we didn’t notice the fleas when looking at the house, but the place is infested. i had flea busters come out and treat the house, they said give it 3-6 weeks. they put a boric acid powder down and grind it into the carpet. it’s supposed to work for a year, but i am afraid that the recent rain might be working against it (the powder is supposed to dry out the suckers so they die).

well, it’s been about 4 weeks, and there is no improvement.

i have vaccuumed every other day (pretty tiring when you have a newborn and a 4 year old to take care of too).

i understand that they have to hatch out first before you can kill the little vampires, but damn, how much longer?

i was so excited about this house. now, we’ve been there a month and i can’t let the baby play on the floor. how miserable. a beautiful house and i dread going inside.

i am afraid of bombs cause i don’t want toxic stuff all over our stuff. plus, i don’t think it kills the eggs &/or coccoons anyway.

anyone else ever have this problem?

2

I used to have luck with FleaTrol when I had a flea problem with my cats. It comes in a spray that you can use on carpets, furntiture, and what-not. Seemed to work well enough and it claims to kills flea eggs.

Keep in mind that I didn’t have a severe infestation. I’m not sure if i’d help in your case or not. I’m also unsure of how safe it would be for young childeren. But I guess you could keep your child off the floor until the fleas are gone. Then you could rent a carpet cleaner or something.
Do you have any pets in the house? If you do, they should be treated (frontline, topspot, advantage or something) If you can keep the fleas from feeding on the animals, they shold eventually die off. (or at least that is my understanding)

3

We need more information. Do you have carpet or wood floors or what? And, are there pets in the house?

It makes a big difference in terms of approach.

No, the fleas don’t have to hatch out before you can deal with them, you can deal with them as both eggs, larvae, and cocoons, and there are many good weapons out there, but the “pets” and “flooring” thing makes a huge difference.

So.

4

Sorry, I mean, “Is there carpeting all over your entire house, or just downstairs in the living room, or what?”

A female flea needs a blood meal before she can lay eggs, just like a mosquito, so if she only has people to snack on, that limits the number of fleas you can have, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will all die off without cats or dogs to bite. They can set up shop in your upholstered furniture and floors and establish a low-key presence for a long time.

Also, what neck of the woods do you live in? If it’s a mild-climate area, like the South, they are also living out in your yard, and can hitch a ride into the house on your shoes and socks.

5

Have you consulted a professional exterminator? I don’t mean to suggest my fellow dopers are ingorant on this (or any other) subject, but a good exterminator should be able to offer you some kind of guarantee or warranty on his or her work. That way, they should keep coming back until the problem is solved to your satisfaction.

6

We have used the Flea Busters powder (applied it ourselves) and have been extremely satisfied. It does take a long time for it to take effect … be patient. Actually, if you don’t have any pets the fleas would probably dissappear on their own without such treatment. If you do have pets and still feel the Flea Busters is not working I would go to a vet and try Advantage, this is a long-lasting flea treatment that is applied to the pet’s fur. I’ve heard this works very well.

Actually, the Flea Busters powder works until the next time you shampoo your carpet. Which in our case has been several years.

Or you can try a flea bug bomb that can be purchased at a hardware store. Kind of a do it yourself fumigation. But if you have pets and do no other treatment the fleas will be right back because this does not kill the eggs.

7

This is going to sound somewhat ridiculous, but trust me, it worked.

I was in a similar situation to yours after my divorce. The house was small, but it’s all carpet and it was infested with fleas, but otherwise nice. I shy away from chemicals in general, and at the time I had a toddler and several pets, so coating the carpet and furniture was not an option I wanted to consider.

First, I vacuumed all the time, I know it’s a lot of work, but you have to do it thru the whole process.

Second, I noticed that I found fleas on my socks almost every time I took a walk thru the house. It was especially obvious if I was wearing white socks. They jump onto your feet/legs when you walk by, and then make their way up from there.

What I started doing was wearing socks all the time in the house and keeping something handy at all times to kill fleas. They’re tough little shits, you have to put them down on a table or something and crush them. I found that plastic coasters work very well when rolled over them like a wheel with pressure applied.

Think about it this way, there are a finite number of fleas in your house. Kill as many as possible every day and you’re bound to make a hell of a dent in the population. It’s kind of like what uncontrolled hunting does to animal populations. Combined with the vacuuming, which gets the eggs, you’ll see immediate reductions and a gradual phasing out of the fleas.

Sounds weird, but it works.

8

I really should preview my posts!

Just to clarify, walk thru the house, collect fleas on socks, pick fleas off, kill them, repeat.

9

We had an infestation and bombed. We put the kitties out in the garage or the truck and then wiped everything down. They were biting my husband something fierce! No one died when we brought them back in. Oh, and we gave the kitties flea baths ourselves. I’m sure it’s not the absolute safest way to handle it, but it beats the hell out of those little flea monsters!

10

Here’s an idea:

Similar to //\etalhea|)'s but easier and more effective.

Borrow someone’s cat or dog. I’m assuming you don’t have one. The fleas will jump on them faster and in greater numbers on them than on a person (while fleas may bite humans when there is no other choice, their natural inclination is to jump on a cat or dog, not a person).

The most effective and quickest way to then kill the fleas (that are on the dog or cat) is to give them a Capstar pill (made by Novartis - get them from your vet). Capstar pills start killing all the fleas in about 20 minutes, and all the fleas should be dead in a couple of hours. The pill only lasts one day.

If you have the loan of a pet for more than a few hours, like over the weekend or for a week, then just apply Advantage or Frontline. You just apply a little tube of the stuff to the back of their neck (so that they cannot lick it off immediately before it spreads) and it shortly spreads into their skin via their natural skin oils over their entire body. Then any flea biting them dies. Advantage lasts for a month, Frontline sometimes longer than a month. This way, if you have the dog or cat for more than a day or two, as they run through the house the dormant fleas will “activate” when a blood meal (the pet) gets near them, and get killed as soon as they bite the animal. It’s like a mobile flea landmine/booby trap.

There are similar products available in grocery stores, but they are not as good/effective as Advantage or Frontline, which are supposed to only be sold through veterinarians. neither requires a prescription, though, so you can walk into any vet’s office or animal hospital and buy a single application or a box.

If you want more information on fleas (or links to the manufacturer’s websites for the products I’ve mentioned), visit

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/the_flea_control_center.html

11

thanks guys! (sorry it took me so long to respond).

FYI, i have no pets, the house is mostly carpeted. we live outside atlanta, very mild and lots of rain lately, which probably doesn’t help.

i shy away from bombs cause of the baby and toddler, and hopefully the vacuuming and time will kill them off (i vacuum every other day, and they are still horrible!).

the only cat my mom will let me borrow already has advantage, but she also has a skin condition, so i would feel bad using her as flea bait/poison, cause she’s gonna get bit.

i just hope they are gone by thanksgiving! thanks again everyone!

12

Okay, I’m a professional pest control technician. Here’s what you need to do.

Don’t try to do this yourself. It’s difficult enough for someone with the right equipment and training to do it. And it’s not exactly the safest thing for a layperson to do, either.

Make sure you contact a reputable pest control company. They should give you a pre-list of things to do before they come out. Follow them to the letter. They will also probably give you a list of things to do after the treatment. Follow them to the letter also. It may be that you will need more than one treatment. This is not uncommon. Therefore, ask for a 30-day guarantee, and make use of it.

If I explain to you the ins and outs of flea biology and reproduction, you will at least understand the whys and wherefores of what you are told to do.

The first thing you need to know is that flea eggs can lie dormant for a long time. Consider what their life is like in the wild. They may find a host animal and lay their eggs on it, but the eggs may get brushed off, or the animal may die. So, in order to survive, the eggs have become conditioned to respond to certain stimuli, mostly vibration, which would indicate a living host.

So…vacuum the carpeting and floors in every room. Yes, even the bare floors. Yes, even the bathroom and basement. Flea eggs will lie dormant anywhere. Vacuuming stimulates them to hatch. The PC company will tell you to vacuum all over the morning they are to do the service. When they come in, you should be ready to leave the house for about four hours or so.

The technician will go through your house fan-spraying every inch of floor space and possibly even the drapes and upholstery. He should use an insecticide labeled for adult fleas mixed with something called Precor[sup]tm[/sup], which is a pre-emergent flea control. It is an Insect Growth Regulator that either stops the eggs from hatching, or renders the hatchlings sterile, I’m not sure which. There may be other pre-emergent products available, but make sure they’re using some kind of IGR in their solution. This is vital as it breaks the life-cycle of the fleas, which is essential if you’re going to rid yourself of the problem.

As I said, you’ll probably have to stay out of the house for about four hours. When you return, you should vacuum again. It’s a lot of work, but it is effective.

You may need to have a follow-up treatment in 3 - 6 weeks. Hence the guarantee I mentioned above.

I’ve never heard of boric acid ground into the carpet to treat for fleas. It won’t do much for the ones that hatch, I don’t think. An IGR is the way to go. Ask about it specifically.

And follow the directions of your PC tech completely. You need to work as a team in order to defeat this problem.

Good luck.