Friday, October 3, 2014

a worser bug invasion...

...all this time of sweeping up and picking up and disposing of millipedes. I only thought that was a huge annoyance. When I went to bed last night I discovered: fleas. Holy cow. How can that even be possible when we don't even have any animals in the house any more? Where would fleas come from? What does one do about a flea infestation? Is it a sign of terrible sanitation? Isn't this little nearly invisible creature the thing that spread the Plague? Holy cow!

I was getting myself ready to go to bed, and looked down at my white socks and thought: hmmm, wonder where I was to get those tiny black grass seeds on my socks. Then the tiny black grass seeds starting jumping off my socks and onto the bed. It was quite obviously fleas, but I was in such a state of total denial, it took me a while to believe I was seeing what I was actually seeing. I remember hearing that they can only jump about twelve or fifteen inches, and my bed is at least three feet off the floor, so I went to sleep. And wanted to believe it was a bad dream when I woke up, but of course, they were still there, ready for another ride when they jumped back on my socks.

So I looked up the number for the Do-it-yourself pest supply store, and put it in my phone, Waiting for the store to open and have someone who would give advice at 8:30. I was in the store buying a $27 can of spray by 8:50. With instructions to vacuum, then spray all the carpet. I went straight home and got started. Picking things up on the floor that have been sitting in the same spot, making long-term dents in the carpet for years. Hoping to start the flea-free process. I am supposed to vacuum again, every couple of days, and spray again in ten days: which is how long it takes infants to hatch from eggs laid in carpet. I cleaned out the vacuum filter and parked it out in the storage room, to keep any hatchlings from repopulating.

I am freaked out. My cuzzin' recommends a 'bomb' or several that you set off in the house, and leave. So it can permeate everything and poison the hoppers. As well as the remnants of the millipede invasion if there are any left? Which is, I guess, why the instructions say to leave the house while you can, and before you are so overwhelmed with fumes that you can't. Reminding me of the bugs in the Men In Black movies....

I'm feeling like I don't clean house very well, to have such a miserable nasty, icky, unsanitary problem. I associate people who live with fleas as someone one who is not Me. Truth is: I don't do much cleaning, but it does not really get dirty with just us there, and we're not there for much more than going to bed, the occasional meal and showering, washing clothes as needed and leaving again.

I still have not figured out where they could have come from. The last cat wore a flea collar until the day before she deceased, and has been in the Cat Cemetery for over two weeks. There has been a stray/feral around for months. A neighbor was reportedly planning to try and trap to take and get neutered, between litters of kittens. So I don't know if that mama cat is the source of the problem. But I am mostly truly baffled as to where the aggravating little piss-ants could have come from...

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