If you’re a pet owner then you’ve at least heard of, or have been warned about the menaces’ that are fleas.
Fleas are those tiny little bugs that cause a surplus of issues. Whether they’re on your pets or somehow mysteriously appear in your home, they are certainly a pain. It’s like these bugs were created to stand the test of time; with how small they are in size and their flat bodies, or the fact that they can jump 13 inches to their next host, they aren’t easy to get rid of or kill.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
Fleas will either live on your pets and use them as a food source, or they come in on an animal sneaking into your home (YIKES!) and once they’ve broken in, they are now infesting your home and feeding on you without you even noticing (DOUBLE YIKES!).
The scariest part?.. When you do find fleas in your home, for every one flea that you see, you can almost bet there are 80 more hiding.
So the obvious question is ‘how to get rid of them?’, ‘how do you make your pets and home safe again?’ and ‘how do you stop fleas from coming back?’.
First, it’s important to determine how severe the infestation is and where it is located. Usually, the infestation is considered minimal if fleas can only be found on your pets. Though, every pet owner knows that getting rid of fleas isn’t always an easy or simple feat. However, generally a specific soap and a collar or treatment can fix the problem of fleas on pets relatively easily.
Check below for how we recommend treating your pets for fleas!
If you start to notice fleas, maybe not only on your pets, but on your carpet or furniture, you’ve got a bigger problem.
Fleas aren’t just tricky to kill because of their body size or shape, or even just because they can jump far. In order to stop or properly treat a flea infestation, you have to treat for and identify at what stage the flea or fleas are at. It’s a lot of work.
Here are some tips on how to clean your home for fleas.
First, you have to prepare your home for any treatment or remedy to work. You’ll need to remove pets from the home while you’re treating them so that the fleas can’t move to them when looking for a new host. Pick up and remove any loose items from carpeting. Clothes, toys, shoes, or even boxes need to be moved away from the floors.
Next, you’ll need to look for any spots where the infestation is the worst. To find those spots, you’re looking for a grainy black substance, which is composed of dried feces and blood (yeah it’s gross, I know).
Lastly, before starting any treatment you’ll need to replace all bedding. If you don’t want to or can’t do that, then you’ll need to wash the bedding, weekly, in hot soapy water for at least a month to ensure the fleas aren’t living on the bedding.
So fun facts about fleas and treating fleas. It’s A LOT of work. This isn’t an easy treatment process to do yourself. Fleas will burrow into the carpet or upholstery, making it hard to remove them easily or with one swipe of the vacuum. Usually, you would need to vacuum every other day for almost a month to get rid of them, and we mean vacuum anything and everything that they could have been near or on.
On top of that, sometimes, vacuuming can still not be enough to fully get rid of the infestation (Just thinking about that, makes me both exhausted and mad). Steam cleaning is the way to go, if the infestation is severe. However, steam will kill the adults but won’t kill the eggs, so you’ll have to do both steam cleaning and vacuuming to get rid of the infestation.
If the fleas have spread to multiple areas (Let’s hope not), then it’s probably best and wits saving that you call in a pest control company to perform a flea treatment. The insecticide they apply will help progress your efforts further and eliminate the infestation sooner.
What if you have fleas inside and outside of your home? Well, that’s tricky but still solvable. Fleas generally come from the outside, and if you’re living in a wooded area, you’re more likely to deal with fleas on a somewhat regular basis. So, the best way to combat fleas inside and outside your home, is getting set up with a pest control company and they can perform a spray in your yard that kills but also deters fleas from making your yard or home, their home again.
Fleas are tricky and a real pain to deal with. Sometimes, though it may seem easier to just handle ourselves (women know what I’m talking about). When it comes to fleas, get help, and solve the issue quicker.
Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash
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