How Do Fleas Get into Your Home?

Fleas are a big nuisance. No matter how hard you try to keep your house clean and tidy, these stubborn, microscopic bugs can somehow find a way to infiltrate your house. If you have pets at home, you have a higher risk of flea infestations. Fleas like to hide in the fur of animals and feed on their blood. At Averse Pest Control, we provide flea control in Boise, Idaho. Being small in size, fleas can enter your house through window screens and cracks in the floor. Sometimes, if a friend or relative is visiting your house and he walks in with one of his pets who has fleas, they can be transferred to you house. So, let us dive deep into this topic and learn more about fleas. How they invade your home? How to get rid of them? How to prevent their future infestation? Time to learn….

• Majority of the flea infestation occurs whenever an outdoor pet brings them from outside into your home
• Sometimes, if you bring an old furniture in your house, chances are that fleas are already hiding in the wood and it enters your house
• A guest visiting your house can have flea on his skin or clothing if their house was infested by fleas
• They also find their way inside through the window screens and cracks in the floor
• You bought something from a hardware store and it had fleas on it

Fleas lay eggs on the fur of your pets or bedding. Chances are that these eggs fall off on the surrounding furniture and floor from where they are transferred to other rooms in your house. Even a few fleas can soon become an infestation. These microscopic bugs can lay up to 500 eggs within a few months, and an egg hatches within one to twelve days after they are laid. Flea eggs usually hatch into tiny larvae, which stays hidden in floor cracks, furniture and carpets. These larvae mature over the course of two week, but sometimes it can take up to six months for the larvae to fully mature due to some environmental conditions. Once the larvae have matured, it spins an insecticide-resistant cocoon, and stay inside it for another five weeks. Sometimes, the fleas will rest inside their cocoons for a longer time and will only emerge whenever they feel vibrations from any potential host passing by. Many times, when you return to your home after a long trip, flea infestation is very common because the matured larvae inside the cocoons suddenly feel vibrations, hatch out and the infestation begins. Fleas feed on the blood of its host, and they can only lay eggs when fed. If fleas have not fed on blood for two to five days, they usually die. However, if the temperature conditions are humid and there is enough to eat, fleas can survive from a few months and up to a year. In some rare circumstances, fleas can live for up to two months without eating.

Before you even try getting rid of fleas at home, your first step should be to check them on your pets. When you try parting your pet’s hair to check for fleas, they will usually run in the opposite direction. 

Check for Fleas on Your Pets. 

Here is how to check fleas on your pets:

• Buy a flea comb from the market
• Start with your pet’s head, near his ears
• Run the comb smoothly towards the back, especially in the spots where your pet scratches the most
• After running the comb, immediately dip it in a bowl containing a solution o some liquid dish soap mixed in water. This helps to kill them instantly
• Repeat the process several times

 

Checking for Fleas on You. Pets aren’t the only ones responsible for fleas. Humans can also be a source of flea infestation in the house. Because fleas have the ability to make high jumps, one of them might have already when you were in your backyard doing some gardening or playing with your friend’s pet. A good way to spot fleas in your home is to wear white knee-highs and walk around in your stocking on the carpet or around your house for a while. Fleas will jump onto your legs, and it will be easier to spot them on a white background. 

Getting Rid of Fleas. Unlike bed bug infestation, dealing with fleas is pretty easy. Here are some ways to get rid of them:

 

• Wash or get rid of the bedding or blankets where you suspect fleas
• Vacuum often as it will spur more pupae to emerge from their cocoons and come in direct contact with the insecticides and other insect killer sprays that you apply onto that area. In fact, on one of our Nampa flea control treatments, vaccuuming alone seemed to do the trick. Keep the area clean is one aspect, but stirring them up is the other
• If you are using an insecticide spray, make sure that you apply it to every area where the fleas are found
• Keep yourself and your pets away from the room, surface or house that has been recently treated for fleas
• Keep the windows open during the day as it helps to create unfavorable conditions for the fleas to live. Most likely, they will die because of heat

 

At last we would say that getting rid of flea infestation at home is not an easy task to do, at least by yourself. It is time-consuming, requires some skills and isn’t 100% effective. You may be able to kill them but not control their future infestation. Best way is to contact a professional flea control service for help. At Averse Pest Control , not only do we promise to help you get rid of your flea problem at home but also guarantee the reliability of our results and any future infestation.