Originally posted by zoolander So you have a plague of fleas ........ hate to see how messy your house is ! lol
You need to get an exterminator in to spray the yard and in the house. You may need to tear out your carpets also. Tidy up your yard.
I once worked at somebodies house, and they had fleas and roaches everywhere. The place was filthy.
I'm currently renting in the sub-tropics, and I've used 3 tubes of acrylic gap sealant, 2 tubes of clear silicone, half a tube of gray silicone, one door weather strip, and 1 door jam foam strip. I installed two man hole covers and caulked them both. I have strategically locked out the roaches, and spray everywhere with surface spray that last 3 months.
You need to do a Sigourney Weaver (Ripply from aliens) on your house and yard.
Geeze, that was a very insulting thing to say. FYI, roaches and fleas can exist in the cleanest houses on the planet. You can't always just lock them out. My house isn't military glove perfect but it's definitely not dirty and I don't leave food or paper around anything they like. I keep a fairly clean house and it's not even cluttered compared to most people I know actually. I love how you just assume that I live in filth and don't have an exterminator. :P
For the record I do clean all the time and I have a regular bug guy and a lawn spray service. I also have a relative who runs an extermination service and he keeps me up to date on things that way. Living with bugs here it is just a constant battle thing. I live in a mobile home not a regular house. I can caulk and spray all I like it's not going to keep everything out. I live in an area that is fairly heavily wooded, and sandy. There are wild animals running all over the place and the fact that my animals have not gotten fleas now for several years is a testament to my dedication to cleaning and to keeping them out.
Pretty much everyone around here is battling fleas like mad this year. Like I said they're hatching out in droves because we've had a very soggy year so far and it's not yet gotten cold enough apparently to kill a lot of them off. You obviously did not read what I said. Most of the flea products on the market now are not working as well as they have been. Advantage, Frontline, Capstar, etc the fleas are getting very resistant. It's not as simple as you think. I have very little by way of carpeting actually. I'm semi allergic to dust mites and carpet messes with my allergies so most of my floor is just linoleum. I am going to treat what carpet I have but it's not for lack of doing so that I have finally gotten them. My cats have been regularly bathed and have had either a gel or a pill.
The closest they get to the great outdoors is a fully screened in porch and right now the windows aren't even open because we have the storm windows on and they're totally closed. It's too chilly now to just leave those windows open and we usually don't much anyway. If it's that warm they're inside in the A/C with me, not hanging out near open windows. Usually when they are out there they have closed windows between them and the outside. They should not have fleas at all but yet they apparently do. They had a bath and then a pill last month, and the month before that, etc. The pills clearly have stopped being effective for some reason and apparently Advantage II isn't much better. But my cats they don't roam, not at all. We have coyotes here, raptor birds that eat rabbits and the like, even the odd gator. No way I let them out to prowl around...
It's annoying as heck for me. I do all the things you're supposed to do to keep the little pests out and yet, fleas. I'm not real fond of where I live now. We spray like mad, there's hardly anything to call a yard, and yet, bugs. The sudden influx of fleas is a PITA but that's nothing compared to the rest of it. So far this year I've had to wage major battles against gnats, mosquitoes, ants, wasps, and flies. My neighbors had to remove a huge wasp's nest last week apparently. We had a few smaller ones ourselves. I let the bug guy take care of that but they are everywhere this year and still active even in Dec. Wasps are supposed to hibernate and then die off in the cold, but they're not apparently, not this year. My bug guy is just amazed at how many active nests he's seeing now.
Regular roaches and that the exterminator pretty much takes care of but there are a lot of bugs here that you just have to constantly battle to keep ahead of. With the gels and pills fleas haven't really been an issue for me till now. But apparently I can't count on any of that now which makes it a lot harder because down here you don't just get a few fleas, you can get gazillions...