Once, long ago when I was about 20 years old, and engaged to be married, I was back at home for summer break in college. My fiance was in town as well, and my brothers and sister were home with me.
Our parents were gone on a trip together, and left us to take care of the house, or "hold down the fort" while they were gone. I am trying to remember if we still had Mama Kitty also at this time, and I think we did. We also had a big golden lab mix named Rusket. We loved our pets! It was hot in the summer, and the house was big and expensive to keep the air running all the time. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as my parents left, it was as if a flea explosion had happened!
I kid you not, it was horrifying, though maybe not to the level of a horror film. What was horrible though, was the poor dog was being nearly eaten alive. My guess is that since there were fleas, that they all had laid their eggs and we had multiple generations of fleas being born all seemingly at once!
We were poor college kids at this time, and like I said my parents were gone, and we never thought to call on an exterminator ourselves. I came home from my summer science course and put one socks this particular afternoon. I always wore socks around the house and still do. I felt a bite on my ankle, and realized there were a few fleas jumping onto my white socks! I was thoroughly grossed out, and nearly panicked, but didn't want to do nothing. I quickly took off my socks and looked for my dog. Poor thing.... Here is what we all did..
I put my white socks back on, and I kind of instinctively grabbed a bowl, put water in it, and took the fleas off of my socks and into the water. They couldn't jump away. I called anyone in ear shot, and told them what I was doing, and I was at war with these fleas! So they all did the same thing, and we started counting how many fleas we got! It was so gross. We would flush them down the toilet and get a new bowl of water, etc.
Now this might seem futile to people that have an idea of what a flea infestation is like. In fact, I am not sure this could be termed a flea infestation, but it was to me! There was no way I was going to let a flea that would jump onto my sock and want to bite me, get to live while I tried to go to sleep that night! We got rid of hundreds of fleas this way.
Its an awful story, but we killed so many that we at least felt better. Soon enough, we got the house taken care of, and dog all bathed and treated with the correct things. I just had never seen anything quite like this display of fleas before in my life. I will never forget, everyone with a bowl and grabbing at a flea. Once you got one however, you can't peak between your fingers "to see if you got it or not" or they will jump right out. It was something we could do.
Can you imagine if we had let all those live and breed even more? Yikes!
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, and in the public domain.
