Where do fleas come from in houses and apartments: the main causes of parasites

Last update: 2022-05-08

2022-05-08

When fleas first appear in the house, this is often a real surprise for the owners and is puzzling. Still would! Indeed, for most people, these insects are associated with dirt and unsanitary conditions, and many do not even allow the thought that parasites can appear and settle in their clean and tidy apartments.

Especially incomprehensible to an unprepared person, the situation may look like when fleas appear in an apartment where pets are not kept. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that these insects huddle in the fur of cats and dogs, and it is with these pets that they can enter housing.

And where do fleas come from in the house if there has never been a cat or a dog in the room?

On a note

In fact, many philistine ideas about fleas are erroneous and very superficial. For example, many people believe that fleas live only in dirty apartments and move only on cats and dogs. What's more, many don't know that fleas come from eggs, and that worm-like larvae of fleas can hide in the dusty corners of a house, literally by the hundreds, without being noticed.

Next, we will look at where fleas come from in the house, analyze the main reasons for the appearance of these parasites in housing, and also find out how the bloodsuckers ended up in your apartment.

Where, in general, do fleas come from in settlements?

Imagine an ordinary average city. So, in the warm season, in many of its places it is literally teeming with fleas. These parasites are not visible, but they are almost everywhere. They swarm in heating mains, live in the basements of apartment buildings, shops and industrial enterprises, breed in sewers. What is there! In any park, in a wasteland near houses, in vegetable gardens and in front gardens, they also thrive, they also huddle in garages, boiler rooms and boiler rooms.

Somewhere there are fewer fleas, somewhere more. In some places they can live permanently, but somewhere they accidentally and briefly find themselves jumping off the fur of a running mongrel. It often happens that in one place or another, fleas start up in the warm season, and freeze out by winter. And in other areas of heating networks, generations of fleas replace each other for years - we can say that the pipe insulation here is literally plowed by them.

Now imagine that in the middle of this “flea habitat” is your apartment or private house, clean and (yet) not infested with fleas. As soon as the necessary conditions are created, the penetration of parasites inside will only be a matter of time. We’ll talk about the ways fleas get into housing a little lower, but for now we’ll just note that there are no hermetically sealed apartments, and fleas can appear in almost any room (and the less attention home owners pay to flea protection, the more likely it is that uninvited guests will be able to multiply here en masse).

In the settlements themselves, fleas live constantly, being parasites of various warm-blooded animals, including humans. Dogs, cats, and most importantly - rats and mice - fleas terrorize all year round.

Almost every animal in any settlement feeds fleas with one or another regularity, literally on all street cats and dogs you can find these insects, sometimes tens and hundreds of parasites. And wherever host animals can spend the night or live permanently, fleas also live.

Now remember how many street cats and dogs live in your yard? How many cats are hiding in the basement of the apartment building you live in?

However, the main "breadwinners" of the flea population are not even cats and dogs, but rats and mice, since there are much more of them in settlements than cats and dogs combined. At the same time, rodents are less noticeable, many people never meet them at all. But, nevertheless, it is the rodents that feed the hordes of fleas with their blood, and the parasites themselves live both on their body in wool and in their nests.

On a note

Like all insects, fleas are very sensitive to air temperature. In winter, they can live only in the wool of their owners, in shelters constantly visited by animals or in warm rooms (including non-residential ones - in heating mains, basements and boiler rooms, for example). Therefore, most often they appear in the apartment in summer and autumn, when they breed in large numbers.

Considering that rats, mice, cats and dogs can be found in basements, and in doorways, and in attics, and in parks or front gardens, and in warehouses, shops and residential premises - it becomes quite clear where fleas come from in the house . Do your neighbors have a cat? This means that fleas can live behind the wall. And if the neighbors have a dog that is regularly let out on the street, then at any time it can bring fleas to your door.

And yet, not only animals bring fleas into apartments.There are other factors for the possible appearance of parasites ...

Migration of parasites from contaminated premises

One of the important ways of spreading fleas is their ability to independently move from already developed territories to new ones. Due to this, fleas can often appear in apartments where animals are not kept at all.

For example, fleas may appear in an apartment:

From neighboring apartments, moving between balconies and loggias, less often - through ventilation. It is very important for those who have cat grandmothers or just neighbors who keep a dog and do not particularly monitor her hygiene behind the wall;
From basements (relevant for both apartment buildings and private ones);
From attics;
From adjacent non-residential premises - shops, warehouses, boiler rooms;
On the first floors of apartments - from the yard, from the front garden and just from the street. It is commonplace for a street cat to sleep under the balcony (and even more so - to sit on the window ledge) so that several insects or their eggs end up on the balcony itself.

It is also useful to read: How to kill fleas in an apartment

In private houses, fleas appear from the same place as in apartments on the first floors - more often from basements and from the street. In general, on the site, parasites can live in the garden, in the toilet, in the barn, and even in the well.

Fleas enter the living quarters themselves through doors and windows, ventilation ducts, cracks in the walls, joints of heating and water supply pipes. Often, parasites are brought here by domestic animals and pest rodents.

On a note

Fleas are not "traveling insects" capable of covering long distances on their own.They can migrate from one room to another if their owner (rat or cat) died somewhere nearby, in the same basement, and when they are forced to settle in order to find new sources of food.

The penetration of fleas into apartments on the first floors regularly occurs in the summer during the period of mass reproduction of parasites.

Pets as a possible source of flea infestation

In most cases, it is four-legged pets that bring fleas from the street. It is not always possible to detect this right away: often the parasites "arrive" on the dog, live on it and do not particularly bother anyone. But all this time they scatter eggs around them, from which later worm-like larvae hatch, small and almost invisible, living in secluded corners of the house.

Fleas will begin to actively bite the residents later, when the larvae turn into adult insects. As a rule, this happens a few weeks after the first fleas enter the room - by that time the parasites in the animals themselves can even be eradicated, and the owners will quite naturally be perplexed where the fleas come from in the apartment.

Moreover, you do not have to have a cat or a dog in order for fleas to start up in your apartment - you can also become a victim of them thanks to pets living with neighbors.

When an apartment is infested with fleas by rats and mice

Rodents cause fleas in the apartment in two cases:

Rats or mice, with varying regularity, enter the dwelling itself, and fleas either jump off them here or scatter their eggs;
Either rats and mice live and make nests close to the apartment or house - in the basement, in the front garden, in the attic, or even behind the wall of a private house.Here, the fleas themselves can jump to the apartment, and their larvae, swarming in the cracks of the walls and floors, can crawl inside. And if there is a nest near the apartment in which the animal will die (for example, after using rat poison), then fleas from the corpse of a rodent will almost certainly climb into the room in search of food.

It is in this way that fleas appear in private homes most often. Here, rodents live in the garden, they can make moves and nests in the wall insulation, and in this case, fleas are separated from the living quarters by only a few tens of centimeters of the wall. And the moment when at least one rodent entered the basement of a private house can be considered the starting point for the infection of the entire dwelling.

Man and his clothes

For fleas, humans are just as good a source of food as pets. So, with the same success with which parasites bite cats and dogs, fleas bite humans. The only difference is that fleas stay on a person for much less time than in the thick fur of domestic animals (and even more so, fleas do not live on a person, as, for example, linen lice do).

Fleas can appear on clothes and open areas of the human body, for example, in the following situations:

After a person visits a basement or cellar, after descending into a well or heating main;
After hunting, when the hunter can stay near a fox or badger hole for a long time;
After walking near an infected dog or cat.

It is interesting

Some plumbers, leaving the basements of apartment buildings in summer or early autumn, are literally strewn with hungry fleas.

Insects in these cases can jump on the legs, on the body and even on the head, get lost in the folds of clothes and hair, and jump to the floor already in the house.If only one or two fleas appear in the room in this way, then they will most likely die rather quickly and will not give rise to a new population. If a person brings several dozen parasites from the basement of the house on clothes, then there is a great chance that bloodsuckers, in the absence of adequate measures to combat them, will settle in the living room for a long time.

It is also useful to read: How to treat flea bites in humans

Things infected with larvae as a source of fleas in an apartment

It is worth noting another way that fleas appear in an apartment, which is usually rarely taken into account: if not the adult parasites themselves, then their larvae can be brought into the house with furniture, carpets, various drawers, bags and other household items.

Flea larvae are small, legless, worm-like creatures that, as a rule, crawl in mud and dust, feeding on various organic debris. They can be found almost anywhere - in carpets, in flower pots, in a cat sand tray or trash cans, behind baseboards, in old things, that is, anywhere where dust and dirt can accumulate.

Review:

“We have some small worms in our house, or not worms - who knows what it is. Small, only 2-3 mm in length, black. Sometimes you lift something from the floor, and there these worms crawl. Where they came from in the house is not clear. Tell me how to get rid of them and why they appeared in the house? .. "

Oksana, St. Petersburg

How to determine the source of infection specifically in your situation?

How to understand where fleas come from specifically in your apartment?

Sometimes there are situations when it is problematic to find out exactly where the fleas came from in the apartment.

If the obvious options disappear (for example, you do not keep pets and do not walk in basements and attics), then it is worth considering the following possible versions of the appearance of parasites in the room:

If you live in a private house, or on the first or last floor of an apartment building, then fleas are highly likely to independently enter your home from the basement or attic. This is an occasion to go and check if the basement and attic are teeming with parasites - if so, then you need to start getting rid of them, first of all, here, and only then in the living room itself;
If the neighbors keep pets and at the same time their housing is not distinguished by a high level of cleanliness, then it is highly likely that the fleas have moved to you from them. It is worth asking if the neighbors themselves suffer from flea bites;
If over the past few weeks (up to two months) you have had to poison rats or mice in a private house, then most likely this is what led to the mass “exodus” of hungry parasites from empty nests and from the corpses of rodents;
If one of the family members regularly goes hunting, or recently he had to go down to the basement, it was probably he who brought the fleas on his clothes;
Finally, if you recently moved old furniture or carpets (which could contain flea eggs and larvae) into the house, then it is possible that parasites came to you in them.

What to do now - how to get rid of parasites?

Now that you know (or very likely suspect) where fleas come from in your apartment, it's time to get rid of parasites.

To effectively fight fleas, you must:

Block the ways of their possible re-penetration into the room;
Destroy those fleas that are already in the room;
Destroy their larvae.

It is important to act in the specified sequence.

How to eliminate the cause of the appearance of fleas in the apartment?

If the parasites are introduced by a pet, treat the fleas on it and put a flea collar on it for several weeks. On walks, try to avoid contact of the animal with stray cats and dogs;
If fleas enter the apartment from neighbors, from the basement or from the attic, then seek to sanitize the infected premises by the SES. Today it is absolutely real, especially if not only you are suffering from fleas, and the complaint will be collective;
In a private house, treat the basement yourself or with the help of pest control specialists;
If rats or mice enter the premises, then take measures to destroy them, and in addition, block the entry of rodents into the premises (since fleas can also use these routes). You can get rid of rodents in a private house both independently and with the help of a deratization service;
If a person regularly brings fleas into the room, then quarantine should be arranged for him and his clothes after each visit to the basement, or after going hunting. Things are carefully shaken out on the street, after which they are washed at maximum temperature.

After that, it is necessary to get rid of the fleas already present in the apartment, as well as their larvae. This can be done independently with the help of modern insecticidal preparations, or you can call the pest control service - its specialists will quickly cope with the parasites. By the way, they, knowing why fleas appear in your apartment, will give useful recommendations on how to protect against them specifically in your case.

When choosing drugs for fleas, it is advisable to consider the following points:

Preparations for removing fleas in pets and for baiting fleas in an apartment differ significantly. It is impossible to treat the animal with means intended for disinfestation of premises;
To treat an apartment (house), it is advisable to choose drugs that do not create an unpleasant odor in the room and have a prolonged action, effective both against adults and against larvae (for example, Get, Xulat Micro, Lambda Zone and some others);
For more effective destruction of flea larvae, especially in large areas (basements, attics), it is advisable to combine the spraying of an insecticide solution and the subsequent treatment of the floor with insecticidal powders - the so-called dusts (for example, Ecokiller, Clean House dust, Phenaksin, etc.).

In conclusion, it is worth noting that if fleas appeared in the house, then you need to start fighting them immediately after they are discovered - parasites multiply very quickly, are able to tolerate a number of diseases and often cause severe allergic reactions with their bites.