Flea in home, but no pets
Daebunz
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ran into something recently that is causing my mind goblins to work overtime and wanted a second opinion
tl;dr is I encountered and removed a single flea on my person very late saturday evening. I've never dealt with them with no animals present but I am aware just one is usually unlikely.
- I live alone and do not have any pets nor do I encounter any belonging to others on a normal day
- I have been at this apartment for almost 2 years so shouldn't be a present left over from prior tenant that did
- other 2 units in the building I'm 99% sure don't have pets
- my place is a studio apartment with hardwood floors minus one or two very tiny rugs that i checked to the best of my ability
- I have seen no further evidence of more fleas besides the one
- I was inside a petco the day before and bought a few items
My best guess is that I picked up the new friend at said petco and that I shouldn't be facing some larger ongoing problem, but having dealt with a flea crisis in the past this is really letting loose The Paranoia™. I've been aggressively vacuuming and cleaning to be safe
Is there anything I should keep an eye out for/do, or probably just chill out until I see anything more beyond the one I disposed of?
tl;dr is I encountered and removed a single flea on my person very late saturday evening. I've never dealt with them with no animals present but I am aware just one is usually unlikely.
- I live alone and do not have any pets nor do I encounter any belonging to others on a normal day
- I have been at this apartment for almost 2 years so shouldn't be a present left over from prior tenant that did
- other 2 units in the building I'm 99% sure don't have pets
- my place is a studio apartment with hardwood floors minus one or two very tiny rugs that i checked to the best of my ability
- I have seen no further evidence of more fleas besides the one
- I was inside a petco the day before and bought a few items
My best guess is that I picked up the new friend at said petco and that I shouldn't be facing some larger ongoing problem, but having dealt with a flea crisis in the past this is really letting loose The Paranoia™. I've been aggressively vacuuming and cleaning to be safe
Is there anything I should keep an eye out for/do, or probably just chill out until I see anything more beyond the one I disposed of?
Daebunz on
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One time my dog had fleas bad, and one of the tools I used to kill them en masse was a small plastic light that sits on the floor, with a sticky pad on the bottom. They're drawn towards warmth like moths to a light. It was only like 20 bucks on Amazon and killed hundreds of them.
Also fleas can jump from people to people so it could have come from someone you interacted with
What Local H Jay said but I'd also recommend letting the Petco that you were in know that they might have been the source. I'm sure not all of them are the same, because chain business gonna chain business, but the one local has actually been really good about taking this kind of thing seriously. Though that probably makes sense considering it's a place that does grooming and encourages people to bring their pets into the store.
If you had an infestation, you'd know... there would be no wondering. If you really want to set your mind at ease you can put a few pieces of tape sticky side up on the floor by your bed, the couch and your door/windows. Be warned, you will learn that bugs are all around you - all the time. Fleas are easy to identify though.
fleas suck. My dog had them and it's annoying. Like professionally I've dealt with a massive bedbug outbreak, and fleas were harder to get rid of.
Since you don't have a pet, it's way easier.
I've been vacuuming daily instead of weekly so that the mind goblins can go back to sleep, but yeah I figured if there were more they'd find me.
I planned to adopt a new cat in the near future and after the flea incident my prior cat had one time seeing one was like, instant nightmare scenario.
Guess I'll just chill the fuck out then unless I see anything further, thanks folks
God the invention of that stuff. Night and day compared to stuff at our disposal when I was a kid.
If you like that stuff, the Serestro collars are amazing. Last about 8 months. We went from finding multiple ticks on our dog and cat to watching them die if they even came near them. Supposed to be good against fleas, but we’ve never had problems with those so I can’t vouch for that aspect.
Easier flea trap is to put a wide container (we used a pie pan) filled with dish soap and water (only need about a half inch deep) on the floor near where you sleep (or sit, wherever you think you'll have fleas). Dangle an old school incandescent night light bulb above it (around a few inches above the water) and go to sleep. If you have a lot of fleas you'll see some in the pan the next morning. We used to do this in Hawaii whenever we had a few fleas show up in the house and after a few days they would be all gone. The idea is that they go after the light and hit it, fall into the pan and drown with the dish soap (we used the all famous Dawn, but I'm sure all types would work) would help them drown.
Steam: betsuni7
All of the advice given here is solid, but I want to echo this point. One of my colleagues is a flea biologist, and this is his actual answer when people ask him how to deal with fleas.
This kills the adults, and then as long as you keep the cat or pet indoors so it can't pick up a secondary infestation, the one-two punch of constant vacuuming and medicated cat will take care of the problem in about a month.
My family used to have indoor/outdoor cats so we dealt fleas pretty much every year, but the worst flea infestation I ever dealt with was when the cats that lived in the apartment I lived in moved out and left their fleas behind.