Borax? Never had to deal with them myself fortunately, but I’ve heard this is a potential solution.
So slightly relevant to flashlights. If you get a bowl of water, add some dish soap, and point a flashlight/light source at the bowl at night, it makes a flea trap. You can use Dawn but also Jet Dry but obviously be cautious of animals drinking the water. They can live up to 24 hours in water so make sure you flush it. You can also rinse fleas combs off in a bucket with Dawn water instead of putting them in the trash.
The dogs use an oral 180 day flea medicine these days and don’t have the negatives of flea medicine on their backs.
Well then! Puts that to rest.
diatomaceous earth (DE); not poison, but don’t breathe it, I rub it into my cats fur and sprinkle it around out of the way places; you can also mix it into your pet’s food for internal pests. I buy mine at Walmart; it’s also used in some swimming pool filters.
I will second DE, but it needs to be paired with one of the decent sprays or bombs. I our part of the midwest, fleas are a way of life. For a month or so in the summer, depending upon rain amounts, you cannot walk across the yard without your feet getting covered. Our cats are indoors and never, I repeat never go outside. But, they have them every summer thanks to human foot traffic.
Well i tried the dawn soapy water trap and put out 2 bowls; after 24 hrs one bowl had 2 fleas and there was 1 flea in the other.
i had 3 fleas jump my ankles as i was making the check, so i think the dawn trick is just an internet fable that doesn’t really have much use.
Any soap in water will reduce the surface tension such that insects that could normally “walk” on the surface will sink, e.g. mosquito, flea, etc.
Running the vacuum cleaner seems to have diminished them to a great extent. It was like a swarm attack before, just covered my ankles.
i have read about the DE trick and will investigate, but i’m leaning more toward some boric acid or maybe mix BA and DE.
I have 4 neighbors cats around all the time, one of them is sleeping on the sofa right now.
For infestation sprinkle food grade Diatomaceous earth but also use flea killer spray (I got mine cheap off eBay). Spray generously just before leaving the house for a few hours. Air your house afterwards properly.
I only had one infestation and after doing above started using 24/7 water tray flea trap with S21A flashlight at the end(I tried several including cheap zoomies and S2+).
Water tray is excellent because if any fleas come off an animal, rather than you being target they will most likely go for the light. I only had a flea a few times where there is at least 1 or 2 fleas in the traps per day. You will probably need to spray more than once.
For water tray flea trap I found this to be the best combination after trying water only, water with white light and water with green and blue light:
- Bright green tray (any color will do but green tray reflects green light the best)
- Water with washing up liquid (to brake surface tension, I tend to put loads to deter cats from drinking it, not that they tried)
- Convoy S21A (smallest Convoy 21700 and perfect size head to match throat for 750 ml and 1 L bottles. 4800 mAh Convoy battery, 1 x 71350 driver, Osram flat green on 20% setting. Lasts just under 2 days.
- Small bottle to diffuse the light (I use cone shaped 750 ml “Harrogate Spa Sparkling water” bottle, it has some square pattern on the glass which diffuses light nicely and throat opening will seat S21A ok. It is maybe a couple of mm narrower that I would like)
Fill the bottle with water for light diffusion and anchor but empty and clean periodically to avoid Legionares.
- Gaffa tape to stick S21A on the top of the bottle pointing downwards. I leave the tape on and bounce battery off the driver spring when replacing battery.
Once, one of the cats brought in some fleas, which grew like gangbangers.
I sprinkled DE all over inside that it looked as if Mt Vesuvius erupted in the living-room, and dosed all the cats with Frontline at least 2 cycles.
The FL works best, ironically, by letting the fleas land on and biting the cats, to get sick and die. And FL is ostensibly effective against all stages of fleas, not just when adults.
I’m sorry to hear the bowl of water didn’t work at all! I used it in the past and it has worked for me, not getting rid of all the fleas mind your, but aiding in the attack. I’ve worked up to a bowl full of them. It’s just stuff around the house and non-toxic so thought it was worth a shot.
That really sucks. Can’t enjoy the outdoors. Almost as bad as ticks around here.
I suggest taking ativan for the fleas. You’ll still have fleas, but you wont care.
KIWF!!
