Where do fleas come from and how to get rid of in an apartment or private house

Appearance fleas in the apartment - an extremely unpleasant event. Friskily jumping insects, bothering with their bites, cause a lot of anxiety to all households. The question of how to get rid of fleas is faced not only by pet owners, but also by owners of houses whose threshold was not crossed by the paw of a four-legged friend.

How to determine the presence of fleas in an apartment

Before you get rid of fleas in the apartment, you should determine what exactly these insects, and not bed bugs, cockroaches, lice annoy with their presence. More than 500 species of fleas are distributed in the CIS. Each species has its own differences, but only a specialist can distinguish them. For all representatives of a large family, there are common signs by which they can be recognized:

• Miniature sizes. The length of the insect ranges from 1 to 5 mm, the size of the average individual usually varies between 2-3 mm.
• The flea color palette is presented in brown tones - from light wheat tones to dark.
• A flattened body with many bristles, thanks to which the parasite moves well in the coat.
• The ability to jump. None of the domestic pests can make such jumpsas a flea, their length reaches 25-30 cm. If you managed to fix that fleas are jumping at home, the previous paragraphs on identifying the parasite can not be considered.

  

• Painful bites. Fleas mercilessly bite their victims including man, and when piercing the skin do not inject anesthetic, unlike other bloodsuckers - bugs. In addition, the flea proboscis is too short to reach the capillary and the insect has to plunge headlong into the skin. Therefore, places of bites not only hurt and itch, but also may not heal and dig for a long time.

Common parasites

Domestic fleas are a collective term for parasites that can appear in a person’s home, including about 30 species:

• Basement, earthenblack fleas are often referred to as sexual, since the habitat of fleas on the floor, insects rarely cover a distance of 50 cm above the floor. The inhabitants of the lower floors are most often attacked by them.
• Dog, feline fleas prefer to feed on the blood of their permanent owners, but do not miss the opportunity to enjoy the blood of a person.

  

• Bedding, linen fleas - a popular collective epithet of all varieties of domestic bloodsuckers. Due to the fact that it is almost impossible to make out a miniature nimble parasite with the naked eye, for ordinary people, all fleas look the same.
• Rat, mouse parasites can annoy not only rodents, but also humans. Often, after bullying small animals in the cellars, fleas are forced to look for a new food base and any warm-blooded animals, birds, people become their victims.

The reasons for the appearance of blood-sucking insects in the house

It will not be possible to eradicate parasites forever unless you determine where the fleas come from in the apartment or house. In the presence of pets, it is not difficult to trace the connection between the appearance of where harmful fleas come from. If animals go for a walk without special collars, then they may well bring in their hair several specimens, which will first annoy them, and after increasing the population size, to all households.

If there are no animals in the apartment, fleas can migrate from neighboring infected apartments, from basements, through utilities. Often, a person himself brings adult individuals or larvae on his clothes or shoes. Fleas from dampness appear quite often, the reason lies in the increased humidity in the basement and bathrooms.

Feedback

“For a long time I could not understand why fleas appeared in my clean well-kept apartment. There are no animals, humidity is within normal limits, and jumping creatures periodically occur. It turned out that my husband brought them on his clothes. He is fond of hunting and is often near fox holes, from where fleas safely jump over him. Now I force him to change clothes in the car and take all the things to dry cleaning. ”

Oksana

Habitat parasites in the apartment

Fleas do not live on the body of their victim, but prefer to settle near her. If fleas are wound up in the house and there are pets, the first thing you need to check is a cat house, dog bedding, bird cages. You should carefully examine all places with high humidity: bathroom, toilet, showers, sinks. Due to its small size, the insect can penetrate into the smallest crevices and nooks. Fleas often hide under baseboards, in soft toys, in furniture.

Fleas multiply rapidly, one female can lay up to 500 eggs, from which worm-shaped larvae hatch, and after 2 weeks they become full-grown adults. Females are characterized by a peculiar laying of eggs, they literally push them out of themselves, and in a variety of places. Therefore, you can never say with accuracy where the female eggs are laid.

How to get rid of fleas on your own in an apartment or house

Getting rid of fleas is a painstaking, laborious process and consists of 4 stages:

• Purification from parasites of pets.
• Processing the apartment with insect killers.
• Thorough cleaning after disinfection.
  

  

• Preventive measures to prevent the reappearance of bloodsuckers in the apartment.

Disinsection of the apartment and pet should be carried out in one day. To remove all insects completely, re-treatment may be necessary. At home, it is impossible to ensure good penetration insecticides to all inaccessible places, so some of the adults, larvae and eggs may not die during the initial treatment. If fleas attack from the basement, you can get rid of bloodsuckers only as a result disinsection of the basement and the apartment itself.

Feedback

“A year ago fleas appeared in the house, where they came from inexplicably. It is likely that from an apartment next door, an avid catwoman lives there, gathers all the homeless cats in the area. The child was the first to be attacked by parasites, so without further thought about what to do, they turned to the private pest control service. They worked on the apartment for two hours. They advised me not to enter the room for several hours. In order not to risk health, we decided to spend the night with a small child in the country. “No re-treatment was required, since the bloodsuckers were no longer disturbed after the procedure.”

Ulyana

The removal of fleas in an apartment will require a certain inventory:

• Steam generator - for the treatment of textile surfaces, pillows, mattresses.
• Vacuum cleaner - with its help, you can significantly distort the population size.It is recommended to use disposable bags that can be thrown away without regret after processing.
• Classic set for cleaning the apartment.
• Insecticides.
• Personal protective equipment: gloves, respirator, protective suit.

Before poisoning little vampires, you need to prepare a room:

1. All products must be carefully packed.
2. Carry out wet cleaning in all rooms.
3. Depending on the selected insecticide, take out indoor plants, close the aquarium. In the presence of cold-blooded animals - snakes, reptiles, to ensure their short-term residence in another room.
4. During the procedure, isolate warm-blooded pets or provide them with flea collars.
5. After disinsection, ventilate the room and do not do wet cleaning for 3-5 days.
6. All things should be overturned and, if possible, allowed to stay under active sunlight.

The choice of means for destruction

For the destruction of domestic pests, there is a huge range of diverse products that differ in their effects and are used independently at home. You can get rid of fleas in an apartment and a house either with drugs whose substances enter the body through the air, or through direct contact. Various kinds of baits, traps on these bloodsuckers will not produce any effect, since fleas feed exclusively on blood and they will not be flattered on baits containing food.

Aerosols are easy-to-use products against household fleas. One spray is enough for 7-10 m². Most of them are low-toxic and affordable: you can purchase them at any household chemical store. The most popular aerosol products:

• Raptor;
• Raid;
• Get
• Dichlorvos;
• Clean house.

How to get fleas in a house using aerosols:

• The room should not be people, pets.
• Spray the product on all surfaces of frame, upholstered furniture, the space near the baseboards, door and window openings, the contents of the cabinets.
• After processing, close the windows and leave the apartment for several hours.

Insecticidal solutions are the most effective measure on how to get rid of fleas in an apartment. In the departments of household chemicals, in pet stores and in specialized online stores, a huge selection of drugs is presented, most of them are based on cypermethrin. The brightest representatives: Nilar, Executioner, Butox-50, selamectin, garden drug Chlorofos. In an apartment where there is a child, the choice of a chemical preparation should be approached with special care, since some of the products have a strong odor that does not disappear for several days.

The use of dusts is another way to get rid of fleas in a private house. The disadvantage of this method lies in its slow action. Insects die only from direct contact with the drug, and therefore parasites cannot be removed quickly enough.

Popular ways to combat parasites

In the centuries-old piggy bank of folk wisdom, there are many folk remedies thanks to which a person learned how to get fleas out of an apartment.

In medieval France, ladies wore small dogs and ermines to redirect flea attacks on defenseless animals. For combing insects from wigs, scabbard sticks were used, and for catching ingenious gold devices were invented, in which a piece of fur watered with blood was placed. In Versailles, during Louis 14 dinners, a specially trained page was present for catching fleas in the room where she was going to know.

Over several centuries, the recipes for dealing with little bloodsuckers have undergone some changes and may well be applicable in modern conditions:

1. A plant-based mixture can scare away, and, according to proponents of natural methods, even get rid of bloodthirsty insects. Take 2 teaspoons of tansy, wormwood, pour them with a glass of boiling water and add 4 teaspoons of eucalyptus oil.Wash all surfaces with the mixture or pour the product into the spray bottle and use it to treat the room. Those for whom washing seems like an overwhelming task can limit themselves to hanging linen bags with the above herbs or simply spread the branches of plants in the room.

   

2. Add ammonia to the water and wash the floors with “fragrant” water. Ammonium chloride can be replaced with chlorine.
3. Mix baking soda with salt, add such an amount of water to get a liquid that can be poured into a spray bottle. Spray the solution on carpet, furniture, floors and after a day remove the dried mixture with a vacuum cleaner.
4. If fleas appeared in the apartment, an explosive mixture of brewer's yeast and garlic will help get rid of them. According to popular opinion, in a day you will not find a single flea walking around the house. There is no mention of the condition of the other inhabitants of the house.

   

5. In a private house get rid of bloodsuckers will help amulets from conifers and wormwood twigs.
6. If fleas are wound up in the apartment in the winter and frost is raging on the street, you can get rid of annoying "neighbors" by freezing. The thermometer mark should be below 15 ° C. Such a tactic can only be effective in relation to small items that can be taken out in the cold. When you try to freeze the apartment itself, it is likely to get rid of not only all parasitic insects, but also the water supply and heating system.
7. Indoor fleas cannot stand pungent odors. You can verify this after preparing the mixture from any sharply smelling flower cologne, table vinegar, camphor alcohol, essential oils. The resulting solution is used as a means for mopping, as well as for processing carpet products, crevices.

How to save pets from parasites

To get rid of cat fleas, you need to buy a pet in a special shampoouse sprays collars for cats. Also available dog collar. They protect animals from insects. All cat accessories should be washed at high temperature, vacuumed. Technology, how to get rid of dog fleas, is no different from removing parasitic individuals from a cat.