Comments on: De-Flea

By: deneicer1

deneicer1 — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 03:54:55 +0000

When got home from being gone a week I noticed immediately that my legs were covered in BABY FLEAS! Argh! The dogs were not home to continuously keep the population down due to their flea treatment. So…we all took turns running our Dyson Animal Vac [Yes, yes I love it!] and vacuumed up as many as possible. We vacuumed for about an hour, seriously. Then I retrieved the Borax from the laundry room [I now make my own laundry detergent and I love it, too!] and shook it all over the carpet. We left the Borax on the carpet for about 24 hours and went to vacuuming straight away again. The Home Stead – 1 Flea Infestation – 0! My husband sprayed the carpet with icky chemicals just to make sure the little baby-boogers were goners, too.

So sorry about the bed bugs. My husband travels sometimes and I am terrified he would bring them home by mistake!

By: Lellie

Lellie — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:34:51 +0000

I live in apartment and got bed bugs from one of the tenants. Did all the major hot water washing and bagging everything, etc. I use a day bed so I disposed of the mattress and got an inflatable one. I bought some tangle foot and painted my bed legs with it. And I spread diatomaceous earth all around my bed and on the floor and everywhere around the wall that I figured they had come through. And I made sure that my bedding didn’t make any bridges from the floor or walls to the bed. I moved the bed a bit away from the wall. They hide and in the early morning climb on to the place where you are sleeping, bit and then run away.

I am a night owl and sometimes I am still awake in the early morning. For a while I had to make sure my feet were not on the floor because I got bites. The diatomaceous earth is working and the problem is over.

Diatomaceous earth is made from the tiny shells of diatoms and is non toxic to us. The shells are sharp and they cut the bugs and they bleed to death.

Tanglefoot is a sticky substance that traps any insect that tries to crawl on it. It’s a very old product from the 1800′s and still available today.

My city has an epidemic of bed bugs and I would suggest that anything that you buy from a thrift store be immediately tossed in the hot wash and the bag thrown in the trash. Don’t buy a second hand couch or a second hand mattress.

The street people were all over our garbage removing things that were infested.

By: JRae

JRae — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:32:20 +0000

So yeah… it’s bed bugs. *cries*

Looks like they’re a rising epidemic too. And tough to get rid of.

Luckily my building has an exterminator- but it will be extremely difficult to prepare for the visit because you have to remove ALL cloth from your bedroom, sealed in plastic bags and then washed in the hottest water possible. What about my delicates? Also we are very messy, so cleaning up itself will be a monumental task.

This sucks. I never thought I would want them to bring back DDT (apparently the reason bed bugs died out in the 40′s and 50′s).

By: Margo

Margo — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:46:20 +0000

When we had a cat, we had a flea infestation once. I got rid of it mainly by treating the cat with the expensive drops between her ears AND putting salt in our carpets before vacuuming. The problem I experienced with salt was that it corroded the metal on my canister vacuum pipe, so now I can’t remove the floor attachment anymore. But we did get rid of the fleas.

We used four roach bombs on our house when we bought it. . . now that’s another story

By: themomhalf

themomhalf — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:48:40 +0000

putting salt (non-iodized) down on the carpets, furniture, etc…. about 24 hours before you vacuum helps immensely, the fleas have a coating that the salt scratches and they dehydrate!

this is the best book i found for such problems:

Tiny Game Hunting: Environmentally Healthy Ways to Trap and Kill the Pests in Your House and Garden New Edition — Hilary Dole Klein (Author), Adrian M. Wenner (Author)

good luck

By: JRae

JRae — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:19:29 +0000

Thanks so much for the advice!

Hey that flea trap jogs my memory- I read somewhere you can do something similar with a lamp and a soapy dish of water underneath it on the floor. The fleas jump towards the heat and land in the water, which is soapy so there’s no surface tension, so they sink and drown. That would definitely be a good test to see if this is really fleas or not!! (I hope they are, because the idea of bed bugs give me the willies.)

http://www.motherearthnews.com/DIY/1983-07-01/Drown-Those-Fleas.aspx