One night as we were hanging out with some friends in the living room, we heard a screeching noise from the front door. Low and behold, the animal that had been haunting us for weeks. It kind of looked like a house cat but with a face of a possum. A baby whatever-it-was-called was clinging to the ladder and didn’t know how to get back home (aka: the attic). The mother, a huge cat like animal with a long bushy tail, came down to save the baby.
And thus began my research on
the civet cat of South Asia
and later, more research on
fleas
than I ever thought I would desire to know.
Read more about that part of the story here.
Once upon a morning, I decided to sit out on the balcony in my hammock, drink coffee, and abide in the Truth. After a few days of this, I started to itch like crazy around my ankles. I found little bites and remembered seeing fruit fly looking things flying around me when I was in the hammock. I did some research on gnats and found out that there are a handful of bitting gnats–including the buffalo gnat (which is what I thought it could be). So no more morning hammock time but the bites didn’t disappear.
I began scratching my ankles raw –like it was disgusting how bad they looked.
I kept getting more bites. Had at least 100 all over my body at this point.
We don’t have a main clinic/hospital to go to but we were so fed up, we were just going to go somewhere and see if they knew what the bites were. But that morning as we contemplated going to a clinic…
My husband came to the rescue.
He spotted a tiny little speck on his ankle. We began to search our flat (apartment) and found several more tiny black specks. We both opened our laptops and of course–hopped on google to find out what in the world this was.
Well, the google photo of a flea perfectly matched what we had captured and were now jumping nowhere in a ziplock bag.
NOTE: We realized it was the Civet who brought the fleas. We came to this understanding through our research and talking to others who literally became the “host” because an animal was living in their attic.
We have heard of raccoons and rats also carry fleas and infesting homes.
After we read how disgusting this external parasite is and took a vomit break (just kidding, but we did begin praying that we wouldn’t get any disease that fleas carry), we began to take steps to get rid of them.
NOTE:
Errands to eradicate fleas from home
- Pet Shop to find powder (that is usually for dogs)
- Plant Store to find lethal liquids for fleas (to spray on balcony + in house if necessary)
- Hardware Store to find a hose that can be connected to the hot water heater and the washing machine. (Watch out Fleas! heat kills)
- Friend’s house to borrow a vacuum + steal anti-itch cream
(attempting) to rid our house of the fleas
- Take apart mattresses on bed (5 different parts). Put all natural Pet Powder on bed mattresses. spread around. vacuum up.
- Sprinkle Pet Powder on couch. vacuum up.
- Vacuum entire house
- Sprinkle baking soda and salt mixture all over carpets to hill eggs. Gross! (this damaged some of our rugs. it was difficult to get the salt out. Maybe it was because it was during monsoon so things so dry up quickly in the first place).
- Wash hair with dish soap and lemon extract since fleas don’t like lemon. ( I just wanted to be sure they weren’t in my hair. I’m almost positive they weren’t but might as well feel extra clean after being covered with bites)
And Last but not least, I figured we needed some sort of reward for cleaning the house and just hoping the fleas were gone (which little did we know, they weren’t), we ended the night with homemade pb cubs.
Flea Facts
- Fleas jump, which makes them difficult to catch
- They are also very difficult to kill with your hands or by squishing it because their shell is dense
- They have 2 long legs towards the back of their body
- They don’t live on your body. They jump on and off.
- Their bites are usually in groups of 3. (I had groups of three’s all over)
- water kills them so if we caught one, we squished it between our hands until we made it to a sink. Then drowned that sucker by releasing into the stream of death.
Tips for if this ever happens to you (which I hope it never does)
- They like certain body scents. For example, during the 2nd round of fleas, I had 50 bites and my husband had 1. Pahahaha. I must have the magic scent.
- If you don’t have anti-itch cream (of if it’s not working very well), try rubbing a bar of slightly-wet soap over the area that is itchy. It will dry it out. I thought this often worked better than itch cream.
- Soaking your feet (if that’s where the bites are) in cold water and epsom salt is super helpful with healing and helping bites not to itch
- Cheap Flea Trap: Fill a bowl with warm water and dish soap (maybe 1 Tablespoon or a little more). Place it on the carpet or in the area where you think the fleas are. They are attracted to warmth, which is why they jump on animals (or humans) as they pass by. They will be attracted to the warm bowl, leap into the air, dive into the bowl, and drowned because the dish soap deteriorates their shell.
- Vacuum. Vacuum. Vacuum. This gets rid of both the adults and the larva. Empty the vac outside (NOT NEAR YOUR FRONT DOOR). Basically you need to vacuum your entire home (tile, couch, wood…whatever) every day for 3 weeks in order to get ride of them.
- Obviously cover yourself. Wear socks, pants, long sleeve shirts…inside. Socks with Chacos (even in the summer. This helped me not feel itchy or scratch.)
And THEY ARE BACK! We thought we killed them 3 different times now. Going on 2 months.
I’ll let you know when they are officially gone. Currently they are somehow surviving on the balcony.