Fleas in the house are not only a nuisance, but they can also make your and your pet’s life miserable.
Fleas are parasitic pests that feed on their hosts’ blood, including human blood.
Fleas bite, itch, and carry disease vectors that they can transfer to you.
This guide reveals the three sources of fleas in the house. You’ll find out how fleas get inside your house and how to eliminate them from their source.
Keep reading.
3 Sources Of Flea Problem Inside The House
Pets
Pets are the primary carriers of fleas. They get fleas from the outdoors and from other infected animals.
When your pets have fleas, they bring it to your home.
They’ll transfer the fleas to furnishings like carpets, rugs, bed, couches, and pet beds.
How?
Some of the adult fleas will jump off from your pet’s fur and hide in these areas.
The fleas that jump off from the pets, and from the other sources, can also hide in floor cracks and in the furniture crevices.
Fleas lay eggs on pets’ skin and fur. These don’t stick with the skin. So, some eggs can fall off on your carpets, rugs, couches, and bed.
Flea eggs hatch in one to ten days. The flea larvae that hatch out of these eggs feed on flea dirt that adult fleas leave behind in places like bed, couch, and carpet.
So, your pet can be the source of a home-wide flea infestation.
Wildlife
Home invading wildlife like racoons, opossum, rats, and rodents like squirrels carry fleas.
They’ll sneak inside the house through the vents and openings and hide in places like attic, basement, and garage.
And they’ll transfer fleas to your home just like your pets do.
But the fleas in the basement, garage, and other places will need a host to survive.
So, fleas will track you, and get onto places like bed, couches, and carpets where they can have access to your skin.
Hitchhiking
Just like the bed bugs, fleas too are great hitchhikers.
Fleas can travel from one place to another by latching onto things like luggage bags, suitcases, clothes, and even on old furniture, cardboard boxes, and books.
If you bring any of these stuff from a flea-infested establishment to your home, you bring fleas home!
Also, fleas, and parasites like ticks, dwell in the dense bushes and tall grassy vegetation at the outdoors.
These fleas wait in those places to latch onto a host, like an animal.
But if you walk through these places, then fleas can latch onto your belongings and your clothing too.
On reaching home, you transfer fleas from your stuff to places like your living room, bedroom, and to furniture like bed, closet, and dresser drawers.
Fleas from the wildlife and from hitchhiking are common ways of getting fleas without pets.
Are Fleas In The House Dangerous?
You bet! Fleas are not just parasites. They’re also biting insects that can carry disease vectors.
Flea bites are terribly itchy. Flea bites are in the form of random clusters and the bites look like mosquito bites.
There’s also a red halo at the middle of the bite wound.
Constant scratching of the bitten area can rupture the bite wound and can cause infestation.
Fleas bites can also cause flea-borne typhus. It results from the bacteria called as Rickettsia typhi that fleas can carry if they’ve fed on the blood of rats, strays, and other wildlife like racoons and opossum.
A few fleas inside the house can cause a massive flea infestation if you don’t take steps to eliminate them.
A single female flea will lay four to eight eggs after bloodmeals.
Flea eggs are not sticky. And they can fall off.
So, flea eggs can fall off from your pets’ skin or fur, on to your bed, pet bed, carpet, and couch, starting an infestation.
These eggs take 8-12 days to hatch. The flea larva, which is a tiny white translucent worm, takes 5-20 days to turn into pupa.
Pupa is a cocoon that the larva spins to lock itself before it emerges out of it as an adult flea ready to bite.
So, unless you get rid of the fleas, the fleas can complete their entire life cycle and make the infestation worse.
Flea Control Methods
Give appropriate flea treatment to your pets with veterinarian recommended medication.
Bathe your pets with an anti-flea shampoo and make them wear flea collars to prevent fleas from coming back on them.
Also, clean all the areas and furnishings of your home where you’ve noticed signs of a flea infestation, like flea feces and larvae, with a vacuum cleaner.
Things like bed, couch, carpet, rug, pet bed, and even cracks on floor, walls, and furniture are hiding places for fleas.
So, use a flea powder in these places to kill the hiding fleas. And vacuum clean them after 30 minutes to remove the powder and dead fleas.
Wash the bed linen and cushion covers in hot water. Dry them at highest possible heat which is safe for the fabric.
Heat kills fleas. So, exposure to hot water and dryer will kill fleas, in all life cycle stages, in the linen and fabric.
Secure your home from invading wildlife and rodents like mice, squirrel and rats. They too can bring fleas home.
Professional Flea Treatment Methods
You’ll need the help of reliable pest controller to get rid of a severe flea infestation in your house, especially when there are no pets in your house.
Fleas are tiny parasites that are adept hiding in the thinnest of gaps and cracks in your home.
Professional pest controllers can track them and get rid of them by using appropriate professional grade insecticide flea sprays.
Dr. Thomas Orbert, the Microbial Maestro, dances with the tiniest of creatures as an entomologist extraordinaire! With a PhD in entomology, his passion lies in unraveling the secret symphonies of insect-microbe interactions. From minuscule marvels to captivating complexities, Dr. Orbert unveils the hidden world of bugs, igniting curiosity one buzz at a time!