Date Posted: February 10, 2017
Category: Fleas
If you have fleas in your home, you know that they can jump, bite, and multiply rapidly. You can have them in your home even if you don’t have any pets at all. Household pests, like rodents, can bring them into your home without you even knowing. They can travel into your home through cracks and crevices in foundations, through gaps around doors and windows, by hitching a ride on pant legs and shoes.
In Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut the most common flea is the cat flea. Like all fleas, they live on a pet or a rodent feeding on its blood. Their first choice is to feed on a cat, but they can live on other mammals like raccoons, mice, rats, and dogs.
The wingless fleas are the adults, they are ⅛ inch long, flat and black or reddish brown. An adult female flea lays up to 500 eggs throughout her lifetime. That’s a lot of eggs that can produce more fleas, making the task of eliminating them so difficult. Fleas also can jump up to 6 inches at once, making it easy for them to gain access to your home where they will look for food and warmth. They do not live and feed on humans, but they will bite humans leaving itchy red raised irritated skin. They can spread tapeworm to animals, and have been known to give them plague and occasionally can transmit murine typhus.
It is important to know what the signs of an infestation are so you can act immediately if you suspect a flea infestation, although it is much better to proactively prevent an infestation before it starts. If any of your pets begin to scratch, you will want to check them for fleas. You should be able to see them moving around or see small black specks which could be flea droppings on the skin of your pet. As mentioned before, fleas are hard to stop. You can treat your pets, but you will need to vacuum carpets and furniture as well. The eggs, however, as well as the larvae and pupae are so small and can attach to the fibers and may not come loose easily. That means they are still there growing and maturing, starting the whole cycle of adult flea life all over again.
Most flea problems will need to be controlled by a professional pest control service. Big Blue Bug Solutions offers effective flea control services for those in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. For more than 80 years, we have helped thousands of satisfied customers to get rid of fleas and other pests safely and effectively. Call Big Blue Bug Solutions today to discuss how we can help you remove existing pest pressures and put measures in place to keep pests from gaining access to your home in the future. Big Blue Bug Solutions will give you the best possible outcome when eradicating fleas by addressing not only the fleas themselves but also by addressing the pests that bring fleas into your home.
