The War On Fleas
One of the local consequences of climate change is that we haven’t had a hard freeze in over three years. While most people would be thinking: “Well, you live in Florida, why would you want a freeze?” Freezes kept down the bugs.
Before when we had a cold front move through it would rain, and then when it cleared out things would freeze, including the wet ground. A freeze would really significantly reduce fleas and fireants. Without the freeze, the numbers just get larger.
This year my favorite flea medication for the cats, Frontline Plus, stopped working. I have been using it for years, so the current fleas are descended from those who are resistant to the chemicals in Frontline.
My house and cats are infested, and I have to plot a course to fight the fleas.
I will switch the cats to Advantage II because the fleas haven’t encountered that one, and I have ordered three different flea traps to see if I can find one that is effective. None of the traps use chemicals, they all essentially use light and heat to attract the fleas that are then stuck on adhesive pads.
I considered removing the cats and bombing the house, but most of the flea bomb use the same chemicals as Frontline, so that won’t work.
9 comments
i’ve done the flea bombs, the ones in the purple cans that used to work before – the fleas are just laughing at me.
for flea traps so far i’ve been using dishes of water with a little bit of soap to break the surface tension. of course this is a solution i can use in rooms with no cats, so its usefulness is limited, but it’s catching – and drowning – fleas. i’ll be interested to hear how well the commercial ones work, although i can see my horde managing to destroy them too…
The purple bombs were the best, but nothing seems to work this year.
The reason I’m trying three different kinds is to determine not only which is the best overall, but which one I can use with the cats around. They all cost around $15, so there isn’t much difference that way.
but nothing seems to work this year.
that’s the truth. i’ve taken to sloshing lots of soapy water everywhere and then vacuuming it up with the shop vac. the house smells good, and it does seem to drown the adult fleas, but also seems to stimulate the hatching of the flea eggs left behind. i can put revolution on the tame cats (so their lives are a little less miserable), but the wild ones, no way, so they’re just flea reservoirs, which isn’t helping.
I can recommend duct tape for removing them from your body. I have a roll in the office and tear off about 8 inches every so often to capture them. I pulled about 50 of them off my lower legs this morning.
Oh man, I am so glad that my guys are indoors-only and don’t have fleas. I remember those days before Frontline and such, when fleas were a constant misery, and the fact that the new pesticides are losing their effectiveness against fleas gives me pause because it’s symptomatic of a widespread problem — *everything* we have against vermin of any kind, whether fleas or disease organisms of any kind, is losing its effectiveness. We may be going back to the days of mass die-offs due to things like the bubonic plague, if things keep going the way they’re going…
My first cat, Koshka, had a flea allergy and I had to bathe her. That was no fun at all. I bought an entire set of kitchen utensil, including an eggbeater, to thank Anoia, and burned a pound of catnip for Bast when the first of the topical flea medications appeared and worked.
The lack of the winter die off is really speeding up the evolution of chemical resistant varieties of all kinds of bugs and expanding their range to the north.
and burned a pound of catnip for Bast when the first of the topical flea medications appeared and worked.
my collie had flea allergy. she hated baths, but she held still for them. still it was expensive buying enough shampoo for all that fur, and i went through 3 or 4 sets of clippers over her lifetime. twice i took her to professional groomers for her initial summer haircut, and both times [two totally different groomers!] they managed to leave her with small cuts and clipper burns, so it was “buy my own clippers” after that. they came out with advantage sometime during the last couple of years of her life. i was soo happy, for both of us, and i know she was too.
I am so glad that my guys are indoors-only and don’t have fleas.
mine are indoors-only too, it’s the %&^(*& rats/mice/opossums that keep moving into the crawlspace or inviting themselves right into the house.
The only reason the German Shepherd that came with us when we first came to Florida could tolerate it was because he would swim with us and take a garden hose shower afterwards. When I see Samoyeds and huskies down here I just cringe.