Where fleas come from in homes and apartments: the main reasons for the appearance of parasites

When fleas first appear in the house, it is often a real surprise for the owners and causes bewilderment. Still would! After all, most people associate these insects with dirt and unsanitary conditions, and many do not even admit the idea that parasites can appear and settle in their clean and tidy apartments.

Particularly incomprehensible to an unprepared person may look like a situation where fleas appear in an apartment that does not contain pets. It is accepted, nevertheless, to assume that these insects huddle in the fur of cats and dogs, and it is with these pets that they can get into housing.

And where do fleas come from in the house, if there has never been a cat or a dog in the room?

On a note

In fact, many narrow-minded ideas about fleas are erroneous and very superficial.For example, many people believe that fleas live only in dirty apartments and move only on cats and dogs. Moreover, many people do not know that fleas appear from eggs, and worm-like flea larvae can literally hundreds hide in the dusty corners of the house, remaining unnoticed.

Next, we will see where the fleas appear in the house, analyze the main causes of the appearance of these parasites in the dwelling, and also find out how the bloodsuckers found themselves in your apartment.

 

Where, in general, are fleas taken in settlements?

Imagine the usual average city. So, in the warm season, it literally teems with fleas in many places. These parasites are not visible, but they are almost everywhere. They crawl in heating lines, live in basements of apartment buildings, shops and industrial enterprises, breed in waste collectors. Why are there! In any park, in the wasteland near the houses, in the gardens and in the front gardens, they also thrive, they huddle in the garages, boilers and boiler rooms.

Somewhere there are less fleas, somewhere more. In some places they can live permanently, but somewhere they happen to be accidentally and for a short while jumping off the wool of the running mongrels.It often happens that in one place or another fleas infest in the warm season, and freeze to winter. And in other parts of the heating network, flea generation replaces each other for years - it can be said that the pipe insulation is literally plowed by them.

Now imagine that in the midst of this "abode of fleas" is your apartment or private house, clean and (not yet) not infected with fleas. As soon as the necessary conditions are created, the penetration of the parasites inside will become only a matter of time. We will talk about flea entry into housing a little lower, but for now we only note that there are no hermetically closed apartments, and fleas can appear in almost any room (and the less attention the owners of the house pay to flea protection, the more likely it is that uninvited guests can multiply here in large quantities).

In the settlements themselves, fleas live constantly, being parasites of various warm-blooded animals, including humans. Dogs, cats, and most importantly - rats and mice - fleas terrorize all year round.

Practically every animal in any settlement with a certain regularity feeds fleas, literally all street cats and dogs can find these insects, sometimes tens and hundreds of parasites.And everywhere where host animals can live or live permanently, fleas also live.

Now remember how many street cats and dogs live in your yard? How many cats are hiding in the basement of the apartment building where you live?

However, the main “breadwinners” of the flea population are not even cats and dogs, but rats and mice, since there are much more of them in settlements than cats and dogs combined. At the same time, rodents are less noticeable, many people never meet them at all. But, nevertheless, it is the rodents that feed the blood of the fleas with their blood, while the parasites themselves live both on their body in the fur and in their nests.

On a note

Like all insects, fleas are very sensitive to air temperature. In winter, they can live only in the owners' wool, in shelters constantly visited by animals or in warm rooms (including non-residential ones - in heating mains, basements and boiler rooms, for example). Therefore, most often they appear in the apartment in the summer and autumn, when they multiply in large quantities.

Considering that rats, mice, cats and dogs can be found in basements, in doorways, in attics, in parks or front gardens, and in warehouses, in stores and residential premises, it becomes quite clear where the fleas come from. .Do your neighbors hold a cat? So, behind the wall can live and fleas. And if the neighbors have a dog that is regularly released outside, then at any moment it can bring fleas and to you under the door.

And yet, not only animals bring fleas into apartments. There are other factors of the possible appearance of parasites ...

 

Migration of parasites from contaminated premises

One of the important ways of spreading fleas is their ability to move independently from already developed territories to new ones. Due to this, fleas can often appear in apartments where animals are not kept at all.

For example, in an apartment a flea may appear:

1. From neighboring apartments, moving between balconies and loggias, less often - through ventilation. It is very important for those who have the grandmothers of the catwoman or just neighbors behind the wall who hold the dog and do not particularly watch over its hygiene;
2. From basements (relevant for both apartment buildings and private ones);
3. With attics;
4. From the adjacent non-residential premises - shops, warehouses, boiler rooms;
5. On the first floors of the apartments - from the courtyard, from the front garden and just from the street. It is banal for a street cat to sleep under a balcony (and even more so sit on the window ledge) so that several insects or their eggs are on the balcony itself.

In private homes, fleas appear from the same place, from where they are in the apartments on the ground floors - more often from basements and from the street. In general, at the site of parasites can live in the garden, in the toilet, barn and even in the well.

Fleas penetrate into the living quarters themselves through doors and windows, ventilation ducts, gaps in the walls, and joints of heating and water supply pipes. Often, parasites are brought here pets and rodents pests.

On a note

Fleas do not belong to the “insect travelers”, able to cover long distances on their own. From one room to another, they can migrate if their owner (rat or cat) died somewhere near, in the same basement, and when forced to settle in order to find new food sources.

The penetration of fleas into apartments on the first floors regularly occurs in the summer during the period of mass reproduction of parasites.

 

Pets as a possible source of infestation by fleas

In most cases, it is four-legged pets that bring fleas from the street. It is not always possible to detect this immediately: often the parasites “come” on the dog, live on it and don’t particularly bother anyone. But all this time they scatter eggs around them, from which later worm-like larvae, small and almost imperceptible, living in secluded corners of the house, are derived.

Fleas will begin to actively bite the tenants later when the larvae turn into adult insects. As a rule, this happens a few weeks after the first fleas enter the premises - by that time the parasites may even be eroded from the animals themselves, and the owners will quite naturally wonder where the fleas come from in the apartment.

And you don’t have to have a cat or a dog in order to have fleas in your apartment - you can become their victim thanks to pets living with their neighbors.

 

When an apartment is infected with fleas, rats and mice

Rodents cause fleas in the apartment in two cases:

1. Rats or mice, with varying regularity, penetrate the dwelling itself, and fleas either jump here from them or scatter their eggs;
2. Either rats and mice live and arrange nests close to the apartment or house - in the basement, in the front garden, in the attic, or even behind the wall of a private house. Here, the fleas themselves can jump to the apartment, and their larvae, swarming in the cracks of the walls and floors, can crawl inside. And if there is a nest near the apartment in which the animal dies (for example, after using a rat poison), then the fleas from the corpse of a rodent in search of food will be taken to the room almost certainly.

In this way, fleas often appear in private homes.Here rodents live in the garden, can make moves and nests in the wall insulation, and fleas in this case are separated from the living room only a few tens of centimeters of the wall. And the moment when at least one rodent has penetrated into the basement of a private house can be considered the starting point of infection of the entire dwelling.

 

Man and his clothes

For fleas, humans are just as suitable a source of food as pets. So, with the same success with which parasites bite cats and dogs, fleas bite humans. The only difference is that on a person fleas linger in time significantly less than in the thick fur of domestic animals (and even more so, fleas do not live on a person, as do laundry lice, for example).

For example, in the following situations, fleas may appear on clothing and open areas of the human body:

1. After a person visits a basement or cellar, after descending into a well or a heating main;
2. After the hunt, when the hunter can stay near the fox or badger hole for a long time;
3. After walking nearby from an infected dog or cat.

It is interesting

Some plumbing, leaving the summer or early fall from the basements of apartment buildings, are literally strewn with hungry fleas.

Insects in these cases can jump on legs, on the body and even on the head, get lost in the folds of clothes and hair, and jump to the floor already in the house. If in this way only one or two fleas appear in the room, then they are likely to die rather quickly and will not give rise to a new population. If a person brings several dozens of parasites from the basement of a house on clothes, then there is a great chance that, in the absence of adequate measures to combat them, bloodsuckers will settle down in the living room seriously and for a long time.

 

Infected by larvae things as a source of fleas in the apartment

It is worth noting another way of occurrence of fleas in the apartment, which is usually rarely taken into account: if not the adult individuals of parasites, then their larvae can be brought into the house with furniture, carpets, various boxes, bags and other household items.

Flea larvae are small legless worm-like creatures that tend to crawl around in dirt and dust, feeding on various organic remains. They can be almost anywhere - in carpets, in flower pots, in a tray with sand for a cat or in trash cans, behind plinths, in old things, that is, everywhere where dust and dirt can accumulate.

Feedback:

“Some small worms appeared in our house, or no worms - FIG know what it is.Small, only 2-3 mm in length, black. Sometimes you lift something from the floor, and there these creeps crawl. It is not clear where they came from in the house. Tell me how to get rid of them and why they appeared in the house? .. "

Oksana, St. Petersburg

How to determine the source of infection specifically in your situation?

 

How to understand where fleas come from specifically in your apartment?

Sometimes there are situations when it is difficult to find out exactly where exactly the fleas appeared in the apartment.

If the obvious options fall away (for example, you do not keep pets and do not walk in basements and attics), then it is worth considering the following possible versions of the appearance of parasites in the room:

1. If you live in a private house, or on the first or last floor of an apartment building, then fleas are more likely to get into your apartment from the basement or attic. This is a reason to go and check if the basement and the attic are teeming with parasites - if so, then you should start to get rid of them first of all here, and only then in the living room itself;
2. If neighbors keep pets and at the same time their housing is not distinguished by a high level of cleanliness, then the likelihood is high that fleas have moved to you from them. It is worth asking whether the neighbors themselves are suffering from flea bites;
3. If over the past few weeks (up to two months) you have had to poison rats or mice in a private house, then most likely this is exactly what led to a massive "exodus" of hungry parasites from empty nests and from the corpses of rodents;
4. If one of the family members goes hunting regularly, or recently he had to go down to the basement, it was probably he who brought the fleas on his clothes;
5. Finally, if you recently transported old furniture or carpets (in which there could be eggs and flea larvae) into the house, then it is probably the parasites in them that came to you.

 

What to do now - how to get rid of parasites?

Now that you know (or most likely suspect) where fleas come from in your apartment, it's time to get rid of the parasites.

To effectively fight fleas, you need:

1. Block the path of possible re-entry into the room;
2. Destroy those fleas that are already in the room;
3. Destroy their larvae.

It is important to act in the specified sequence.

How to eliminate the cause of fleas in the apartment?

1. If the pet puts the parasites, pick up the fleas on it and put an anti-flea collar on it for several weeks. On walks, try to avoid contact of the animal with stray cats and dogs;
2. If fleas enter the apartment from neighbors, from the basement or from the attic, then seek sanitation of contaminated premises by SES. Today it is completely real, especially if you are suffering from fleas, and the complaint will be a collective one;
3. In a private house, treat the basement by yourself or with the help of a disinsection service;
4. If rats or mice get into the room, then take measures to destroy them, and in addition, block the pathways for the rodents to enter the room (since fleas can use these methods). It is possible to get rid of rodents in a private house, both independently and with the help of the disinfestation service;
5. If a person regularly brings fleas to the premises, then he and his clothes should be quarantined after each visit to the basement, or after they go hunting. Things are carefully shaken out on the street, and then washed at the maximum temperature.

After this, it is necessary to get rid of the fleas already present in the apartment, as well as their larvae. This can be done independently with the help of modern insecticidal preparations, or you can call the disinsection service - its specialists will quickly cope with parasites.By the way, knowing why you have fleas in your apartment, they will give useful recommendations on how to protect against them specifically in your case.

When choosing drugs for fleas, it is advisable to consider the following points:

• Preparations for removing fleas in domestic animals and for baiting a flea in an apartment differ significantly among themselves. You can not treat the animal means intended for the disinsection of premises;
• For the treatment of an apartment (house), it is advisable to choose drugs that do not create an unpleasant odor in the room and have a prolonged action, effective against both adults and larvae (for example, Get, Xsulat Micro, Lambda Zone, and some others);
• For more effective destruction of flea larvae, especially in large areas (basements, attics), it is advisable to combine the spraying of an insecticide solution and the subsequent treatment of the floor with insecticidal powders - the so-called dusts (for example, Ecokiller, Pure House dust, Fenaxin, etc.).

In conclusion, it is worth noting that if fleas have appeared in the house, then they must be fought immediately after they are discovered - the parasites multiply very quickly, are able to withstand a number of diseases and with their bites they often cause severe allergic reactions.

 

Useful video: the nuances of the destruction of fleas in the apartment

 

The appearance of fleas in apartments in the warm season and methods of control in these parasites