There are about 2,500 species of fleas, the tiny, flightless insects that survive as parasites on birds, common house pets, and other animals. They belong to the order Siphonaptera and engage in hematophagy, which means they get their nutrition from the blood of their hosts. Adults grow to be about an eighth of an inch long and are usually brown or black. Their bodies are narrow, allowing them to efficiently move through the hosts' fur or feathers. They are wingless with hind legs that are so well-adapted to jumping that a typical flea can clear roughly fifty times their body length in one leap, a feat second only to the jumps made by an arthropod supergroup called froghoppers. Their mouth parts have evolved to become perfectly suited for piercing skin and sucking blood. During their larval stage, they resemble worms with no limbs and eat organic debris left on the skin of their host.

The most common one to annoy people is the cat flea, and despite their name, they feed on cats and dogs, and wild animals like raccoons or squirrels. They rarely stay on a person, though, as the lack of feathers or fur means a lack of hiding places. A flea would have to spend 12 straight hours sucking a person's blood to be able to lay an egg. They can carry an array of sicknesses that are spread between both animals and humans and most commonly spread to humans is the plague. In the United States that is spread by infected ground squirrel fleas. Flea-borne (murine) typhus is another sickness transmitted by infected cat fleas or their feces. They can also spread parasites like tapeworm. Children are especially at risk because they spend more time close to the ground and on carpeted areas where the bugs are normally hiding.

As much as we wish it were, an infestation isn't something that a person can ignore until the problem goes away. Once she begins laying them, the female lays roughly 40 or 50 eggs per day for about 50 days: producing up to 2,000 of them in her lifetime. Once hatched, the larvae burrow deep into bedding, carpets, fabrics, and other hiding spaces, making getting rid of them very difficult. There are many Do-It-Yourself remedies that people ascribe to, but they have not proven to be effective. Even the products that can kill adults, don't effectively kill the eggs, and can leave a toxic residue behind.

Fleas can be even worse for your pet than you think. Some animals develop an allergy to the pest’s saliva, which changes the common itch to a constant, almost buzzing itch underneath the animal’s skin. This can lead the animal to scratching themselves raw or chewing hotspots in their skin and making themselves susceptible to infections. If you've got flea problems in your home in northeast Indiana, contact Fortified Pest Control so we can get rid of those bloodsuckers for you for good. Reach out to us today for an estimate or to discuss our available services.