Don't take flea problems lightly. Many animals are allergic to flea bites and can become ill if flea problems go untreated.
Before you can control flea problems, it helps to understand the life cycle of the flea. The adult flea jumps on an animal and makes its meals from the animal's blood. The female flea then lays eggs. Each egg hatches into a larva, which feeds on the animal, spins a cocoon and is transformed into a pupa. The shell of the pupa is very tough and durable, protecting the flea until it becomes an adult anywhere from a week to a year later. Under ideal conditions two fleas can produce up to 20,000 offspring in a month.
To fix a flea problem, you must treat the pet, the house and the lawn. First, determine whether your pet has fleas by looking through its coat or running a flea comb through its coat. Flea combs have very fine teeth that pick up fleas, eggs and droppings.
If you discover fleas, talk to your veterinarian about setting up a program of treatment. Your veterinarian has many products that are far superior to those available over the counter. In many cases you'll start by bathing the animal with a flea shampoo. Allow the shampoo to soak into the animal's fur, then rinse it away. This treatment will kill most of the adult fleas and larvae in your pet's fur.
Next, you might apply a flea spray (figure A). When using flea spray, it's important to completely cover the pet's coat. High-quality flea sprays cling to the pet's skin and kill fleas for as long as three months -- ticks for up to one month.
Unfortunately, cats don't like sprays or baths. Cat owners may be better off using a topical ointment or a flea-control pill or injection. The ointment, placed between the animal's shoulder blades, clings to the coat and kills fleas and ticks for about a month. The pill introduces a chemical into the animal's bloodstream that sterilizes the fleas that bite the animal. The injection has the same effect and lasts six months. All of these products have been found to be safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
The flea-control ointment and pills described above are also available for dogs.
When you treat your pet, you'll need to treat the house too. Your veterinarian can provide carpet powder made from a sodium borate derivative. The powder clings to carpet fibers and kills fleas for as much as a year. You might also consider using sprays and foggers (figure B). Foggers are used to treat the entire house and are generally not as effective as sprays, which may be targeted to specific areas.
Fleas spend much of their time in your yard, so it's important to treat it too. If you do use pesticides on your lawn, be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions to the letter. If you overuse pesticvides, they could find their way into the groundwater supply.
Nontoxic biological controls in the form of beneficial nematodes (microscopic roundworms) are now available to rid your lawn of fleas. Nematodes may be sprayed onto the lawn, where they'll prey on fleas and other insect pests.
If you discover ticks on your animal, remove them with tweezers. Try to pull the tick out intact: if the head remains in the animal's skin, use the tweezers to pull it out separately.
| 
)
)
)
