To successfully deal with fleas in your home, you need to have a good understanding of the general life cycle of these insects. Because the diets and habitats of flea larvae and adults differ significantly, flea control must be comprehensive and take into account all these differences. For example, just removing parasites on a pet bed or on the pet itself will not be enough.
It may seem surprising, but many people have no idea what flea eggs and larvae look like, vaguely assuming that they, too, are hiding somewhere in the fur of cats and dogs. Meanwhile, if adult fleas really keep mainly on the hair of pets, in places of rest for animals and humans, then their larvae huddle in closets, dark dusty corners, garbage heaps on the balcony and behind baseboards.
Therefore, the fight against fleas is not only the destruction of directly jumping adult parasites, but also the careful breeding of the younger generation.
On animals and humans, fleas only feed and do not live permanently, like, for example, lice. On the one hand, thanks to this, flea attacks are not so painful - they do not bite constantly and are easy to scare away.But, on the other hand, the fight against fleas in the house for this reason implies a thorough treatment with insecticides of literally every square centimeter of the floor and furniture in the room, while in the fight against lice it would be enough to treat the infected area on the body.
On a note
The optimal place for the development of flea larvae is the nests and toilets of domestic hamsters and rats in cages. Here, food accumulates in abundance (food leftovers, excrement, hay), a constantly high temperature and humidity are maintained.
In addition, fleas seen directly on a pet or on a person’s bed are only the “tip of the iceberg” of the entire insect population in an apartment. The main number of parasites, being full, hide in secluded dark places, crevices, under linoleum and carpets, and it is almost impossible to see them by chance. Therefore, all fleas in the house, regardless of their current location, must be destroyed, otherwise each individual is potentially capable of becoming the ancestor of a new population.
In general, it is necessary to start fighting domestic fleas immediately after detection, not counting their presence in the house as just a minor annoying nuisance. The fact is that fleas are a really serious epidemiological danger.
Why are fleas dangerous to humans and pets?
Fleas are primarily blood-sucking insects. Their bites cause irritation and a local skin reaction, the symptoms of which are collectively called pulicosis. With numerous bites or hypersensitivity, an allergy can develop near the bite sites, secondary rashes appear.
With constant scratching of flea bites, pustular inflammation may appear in their place.
Important!
Fleas do not live on humans, and there is no need to apply special measures to remove them from humans. It is enough to wash well once to frighten off all the parasites, and then destroy them in the room itself.
In animals, the reaction to flea bites is similar to that of humans, but in them, infestation with parasites often goes unnoticed by the owners, which, in especially advanced cases, threatens to develop into dermatitis.
On a note
Children are especially sensitive to flea bites - they often have pulicosis with serious allergic reactions and generalized symptoms.
The most dangerous fleas are that they can be potential carriers of pathogens of very serious human diseases. Among them:
- plague
- encephalitis
- trypanosomiasis
- brucellosis
- salmonellosis
- hepatitis B and C
- tularemia.
In total, scientists found viruses and bacteria in the body of fleas that cause more than 200 diseases dangerous to humans. This does not mean, of course, that a flea caught in an apartment is necessarily a carrier of the plague bacillus or hepatitis virus, but there is always a risk of infection, although small. Therefore, the fight against fleas at home should be started immediately after the discovery of these parasites.
It is interesting
Populations of wild animals, which are parasitized by plague-carrying fleas, are carefully controlled and studied by epidemiological scientists. In Russia, such foci are found in the southern steppes in rodent colonies - ground squirrels, jerboas, gerbils. Studies of these animal settlements allow scientists to develop effective measures to combat fleas and keep their most dangerous populations under constant control.
Correct flea control sequence
You need to fight fleas at home in strict accordance with the following plan:
- The path of penetration of parasites into the house is determined and blocked. Most often, fleas enter the premises in the hair of domestic animals, sometimes on human clothes (this is especially true for hunters). A separate case is apartments on the ground floors of apartment buildings, where fleas climb from basements (the so-called basement fleas). This situation is especially dangerous, since it is among the basement fleas that representatives of the Rat flea species, a carrier of many diseases, are more common.
- The next step is to remove fleas from pets, if any, and then provide protection to the animal at least until the time when the fight against fleas in the room is over. Usually such a fight against fleas in pets requires only a few hours of time.
- And only then should the entire room be thoroughly treated for fleas with the help of special insecticides or use the services of professional exterminators. Depending on the degree of infection of the premises, fleas in it are removed in a few hours or several days (in the latter case, repeated treatments are meant).
After that, it is necessary to take measures to prevent the re-entry of fleas at home.
We remove fleas from pets
The fight against fleas in pets can be carried out by means of different types:
- Flea shampoos are one of the safest remedies. Lugovoi and Phytoelita shampoos are used for cats and dogs, and Dr Zoo and Rolf Club are used for animals with very sensitive skin and hair.
- Flea sprays - e.g. Frontline, Hartz, Stronghold.After applying to the coat, the spray is rubbed into the skin of the animal, which provides protection for several days. Each manufacturer has a line of sprays for animals of different weights and ages.
- Drops at the withers are also quite easy-to-use drugs. The contents of the pipette are simply poured onto the skin of the animal and rubbed with your fingers. Stronghold, Bayer, Hartz drops are very famous. Some of them provide protection for the animal for up to three months.
There is also a special flea powder for puppies and kittens, which is simply applied to the skin under the coat. This powder is quite expensive, it is inferior to other means in terms of efficiency, but it acts quite gently.
After the fleas on the pet have been eradicated, the animal must be protected for several days from reinfection. As a rule, good drugs in themselves have a certain period of residual protective action, but in any case, it is worth putting on an anti-flea collar on the animal until the apartment is completely treated.
Choosing a flea remover
Methods for dealing with fleas directly in the house involve the use of either special chemical insecticides or the destruction of parasites with folk remedies.
The advantages of using insecticides in the form of aerosols and sprays are the speed and effectiveness of their action. With the correct use of these tools, the fight against fleas at home is carried out in a matter of hours and allows you to destroy all fleas and their larvae in the room.
On the other hand, even despite the relative safety of modern insecticides, they can cause side effects in the handler in the form of allergies, respiratory irritation, mild poisoning.Many people are especially afraid to use these products if children live in the room.
If there are few insects, then flea control at home is carried out using aerosol products such as Raptor from crawling insects, Reid, Kombat, Dichlorvos Neo. The effectiveness of such preparations is usually lower than that of concentrates for dilution and subsequent spraying, but they are quite safe and easy to use. In addition, these drugs are relatively inexpensive, and to process a one-room apartment, you will need funds in the amount of about 500-600 rubles.
However, if there are a lot of insects in the house and you need a well-defined and reliable result, then you should pay attention to the following modern preparations:
- Get is a microencapsulated odorless product (microencapsulation technology improves the effectiveness of insecticides)
- Lambda Zone is also an odorless microencapsulated preparation, which is increasingly used even by professional exterminators.
- The executioner is a German drug that is quite convenient to use, but has a smell.
These funds are sold in the form of concentrates. Before use, they must be diluted in accordance with the instructions with water, after which the finished solution can be sprayed with a conventional household spray gun. With full processing of all surfaces, skirting boards and platbands, they destroy fleas at all stages of development.
Even more effectively, professional sprays allow you to kill fleas at home - Tetrix, Sinuzan, Klopoveron. However, these drugs are very poisonous, they cannot be used without special training and personal protective equipment. In addition, they all have a strongly pronounced unpleasant odor.
On a note
The fight against bedbugs and fleas in the room as a whole has much in common and even usually involves the use of the same means. That is why fleas that are less resistant to insecticides always die during pest control from bedbugs, and companies professionally engaged in pest control from bedbugs almost always offer services for the destruction of fleas.
In most cases, it is not possible to completely destroy fleas with folk remedies. Denatured alcohol, vinegar, and kerosene kill insects when they are directly and abundantly hit on them, but it is almost impossible to catch and treat every parasite in the house. Means such as wormwood and tansy only scare away fleas for a while, but do not allow them to be destroyed.
Sometimes dusts are used against flea larvae, but this approach is justified only with a very serious infection (for example, in basements). Usually, when fighting fleas at home, it is enough to simply clean in those places where the presence of larvae is possible, and in the most inaccessible shelters, aerosol preparations and sprays get them.
We destroy parasites in the room
It is desirable to carry out the processing of the premises in the daytime, so that the apartment or house has time to be well ventilated before going to bed.
If insecticidal spray concentrates are used, the contents of the concentrate vials are dissolved in water in the right proportions and poured into a garden sprayer or container from a cleaning agent.
On a note
For a one-room apartment, you usually have to spend 8-10 cans of an aerosol such as Dichlorvos or Raptor, or about 3-4 liters of a spray solution prepared from a concentrate.
Even before removing fleas from the house, it is necessary to move the furniture away from the walls, remove the carpets hanging on the walls.After that, the product is sprayed onto the floor, along the baseboards, behind cabinets and sofas, inside the sofas themselves, under the mattresses on the beds. The resting places of animals, as well as pantries and closets, in which a large amount of dust accumulates, are especially carefully processed.
During processing, the doors and windows in the apartment should be closed so that the aerosol does not erode, and after applying it, let the apartment stand with the doors closed for several hours. Then the room is ventilated, a thorough wet cleaning is carried out in it, bed linen and things from wardrobes are washed.
If desired, all these works can be shifted to the shoulders of professional exterminators or SES. This pleasure will cost more, but it will save time and effort.
When you can't do without reprocessing
In some cases, fleas have to be dealt with in two stages. This is usually required when the room is very heavily infested with parasites, when there are a lot of flea larvae in floor slabs, crevices and external structures where insecticides do not reach them.
Already after the first persecution of fleas in pantries, closets and under the bedside tables in the kitchen, insect powders should be scattered - Medilis Tsiper, Clean House, Feverfew. In a week or two, these powders will destroy the bulk of the flea larvae.
An accurate signal for re-baiting fleas is the appearance of insects a week or two after the first application of the funds. Considering that under favorable conditions, the development of larvae and pupae in total lasts about three weeks, it is after three weeks that the treatment of the premises should be repeated with the same agent and in the same sequence as it was carried out for the first time.Otherwise, the fleas will multiply again in large numbers and start pestering homeowners and pets with their bites.
Fighting basement fleas
In the case when fleas enter the premises from basements or attics (here they parasitize on rats and pigeons), even before fighting them in the house, it is necessary to destroy the population in the breeding center. To treat basements, you should use the services of SES or professional pest control services, since here it is necessary not only to remove the fleas themselves, but also to poison the rats that are their main hosts.
In some cases, basements have to be repaired and cemented to cracks and holes through which rodents and animals from the street enter them.
In the apartments themselves, bordering the basements, you need to completely block the possible ways of moving fleas - hang nets on the windows, in the ventilation shafts and in the boxes of the front doors, lay out insect sections that will scare away unwanted guests (for example, you can use moth sections).
Prevent fleas from reappearing in your home
And finally, you should always remember that prevention is always better than cure. It is easier to prevent parasites from entering the room than to fight fleas in the house for a long time.
To protect the premises, you can use strongly smelling herbs - tansy, wormwood, geranium, the leaves and branches of which are laid out in closets, ventilation ducts, on balconies.
But the main thing is to protect pets from flea attacks on the street. To do this, if not constantly, then at least for the duration of walks on dogs and cats, you should wear anti-flea collars or drip flea drops on the withers.
Hunters and fishermen, who often visit nature, must take off their shoes and shake out their outer clothing before entering the house. It is also useful to immediately wash all of it at a high temperature.
By following such preventive measures against fleas, you can always be sure that fleas will not appear in the house. But if a mistake was made somewhere and the parasites nevertheless entered the room, now you know how to deal with them correctly and effectively.
Interesting video: an example of flea invasion in apartments of a multi-storey building
What remedy to use to protect an animal from fleas: a comparison of drugs
Thank you so much. A very useful article.