Counterattack?

This past week Vincent thought he’d found a flea on Frisco, and I thought I’d noticed being bit. (It’s possible that me running out of allergy medication was contributing to that.) Insects always bite me first. I found we were out of anti-flea medication, and so I got some more at East Louisville Animal Hospital, one of two practices we go to, and applied it that night.

Another strategy we could pursue is vacuuming regularly (tough when the house is topsy-turvy) (vacuuming not just the carpet but the floor, sofa, etc. and then carefully cleaning up the vacuum cleaner to get rid of all of the eggs (and washing sofa pillows, stuffed toy animals, etc.)).

(Vacuuming after powdering the carpet with anti-flea powder is another possible strategy. When I did this in my Phoenix Hill apartment, it apparently damaged my vacuum cleaner. I also remember carefully vacuuming every side of every one of the dozens and dozens of boxes I had in my room (instead of in storage) while I listened to Vice President Cheney and Governor Miller’s angry denunciations of Senator Kerry.)

(The bug thing gives me bad memories, for example, of living with a friend in Soho over the summer when suddenly mosquitoes appeared and then bit me over and over again every night until the cool fall air in October killed off the mosquitoes – three months after they had arrived. I remember the mosquitoes biting my hand through the thick athletic socks I was wearing protectively. I remember turning off the light in the bedroom, strategically, for several minutes, then turning the light back on and killing mosquitoes for 30 minutes, until blood dripped down the walls (my blood, of course.)

Another new strategy we’ve tried recently that Stephanie found on the Internet: was filling a glass baking dish with water and a little dish soap and shining a light on it. Fleas are attracted to the light, but, when they land in the water, the soap makes it so they can’t get out and they drown.

One of the points of the vacuuming and washing everything strategies and the drowning strategy was to avoid using toxic chemicals (like the anti-flea lotion and the carpet powder). Toxics probably aren’t good for Frisco or us, and they’re certainly not good for our turtles (and the eggs – not doing so great as it is).

-- Perry