Siphonaptera

Yeah, you heard me, f.l.e.a.s. Eeeew!


Long story short, we found out the hard way that the renter who had been living in Jan's house had left behind an unwanted gift. She had a cat that had free roam of the outdoors and who we figure must be the culprit who infested Jan's sweet little place. The renter left about two weeks ago so Jan's been doing some cleaning, painting and repair work over there intermittently. On Friday, she took Zuri with her for a relatively quick stop but it wasn't quick enough because late Monday morning Jan made the horrid discovery that Zurine had fleas on her otherwise queenly and pristine belly. Luckily, Ella had not been affected and we saw no signs elsewhere in this house but by the time she had seen these on Z., the man who was doing some work on her tub that day confessed that he was being attacked while in her place.

She moved into quick action bathing the dog; getting special household flea spray from the vet; moving all the dog beds into the garage at this house; starting what would end up being countless loads of wash in hot water followed by rounds in a hot dryer; and treating the empty rental house with a vacuum (vacuum bag went straight into plastic trash bag) and spray. Once I was home from work, we vacuumed this house (same drill), did more laundry, and sprayed the first and second floors. People and animals are not supposed to not be in the sprayed area for two hours and it was getting late so we slept on the futon in the basement which is at least a decent and, on that very warm, humid evening, cool place. 
By Tuesday Jan had decided to hire professionals to treat her house which was infested and, after talking to various people including my mother about their past experience with fleas, we decided to do the same thing with our house on the same day - strife bombing. In our book, there is no overkill when it comes to something like this.  We even got oral pills for the girls.
This meant we had to be out of the house for FOUR hours so we made an afternoon of it. 

Ella caught up on her reading and loved on her mom.

Jan returned an overdue phone call while Ms. Z lounged in the yard having had two baths in as many days - NOT her cup of tea.

We generally lounged then had our grilled dinner on the blanket and never did get to the Scrabble game that we had brought out. All in all, it was a fun afternoon despite the little terrorizing monsters that initiated the camp out.