Our flea season in the New River Valley runs heaviest in August and September. That is when the calls stack up: the dog has been scratching for a week, somebody sat down on the couch and came up with bites around the ankles, and the flea shampoo from the store did not make a dent. Then the nights turn cold and most people figure the problem will end on its own. Outside, it does. The first hard frost ends the flea season in the yard. Inside a heated house it does not, and in some houses it gets worse.
Why some houses get worse when it gets cold
Fleas cannot survive a freeze, but your house sits at seventy degrees all winter, and once the heat comes on the warmth in carpet, bedding and the dog's favorite spot on the couch is as good as any August afternoon. The adult fleas you see on the pet are a small part of the problem. For every one of them there are eggs, larvae and pupae down in the carpet fibers and the cracks of the floor, and that is what carries a September problem into November.
The houses that get worse in cold weather usually have something else going on. When the temperature drops, mice, rats and wildlife look for somewhere to hunker down, and a crawl space or the gap under a porch is exactly that. They bring their fleas with them. A house that had a few fleas in September and a lot of them in late October has often picked up a tenant under the floor.
The eggs fall off the animal wherever it rests, so the heaviest spots are the pet bed, the end of the couch, the rug by the door and under the bed. The larvae feed on the dried blood the adults leave behind. Then they spin a cocoon and wait, sometimes for months, until they feel the vibration and warmth of something walking past. That is why a house that sat empty can erupt with fleas the day a family moves back in, and why a treatment that only kills the adults is back where it started in two weeks.
Where they come from
Most of the fleas we deal with in Christiansburg, Blacksburg and the rest of the valley come in on a dog or cat, but not all of them. We find fleas in houses with no pets at all. Stray cats under a porch, raccoons or possums in a crawl space, a groundhog burrow against the foundation, mice in the walls. Anything warm-blooded that lives close to the house can seed the yard and the crawl space, and the fleas find their way in from there. That is the cold-weather pattern: the animals move in under the structure to ride out the winter, and the fleas move up. If you have bites and no pet, the question is what else has been living under or next to the house, and that is a question we are glad to go look at.
Why the store products keep failing
Shampoos and sprays kill the adults on the animal that day. They do nothing about the eggs and pupae already in the house, and the pupae in particular shrug off almost everything until they hatch. A flea bomb puts product on the top of surfaces and under nothing. The fleas are under the furniture, deep in the carpet and in the cracks of the floor, exactly where the fog does not reach. So the adults die, the house looks fine for a few days, and the next generation hatches into a home that has not changed.
What we do differently
Breaking a flea problem is about the life cycle, not the adults. We treat the places the eggs and larvae are, not just the places the adults get seen, and we use a product that keeps the next generation from developing instead of only knocking down what is crawling today. We walk the house with you first, because the pet's habits tell us where the fleas are: the bed, the chair, the route from the back door to the food bowl. Then we look at the outside, the crawl space and the yard, because treating the carpet while the source is still under the porch is treating half the problem.
Your part matters just as much as ours. Vacuum hard before we come, especially the edges of rooms and under furniture, and empty the vacuum outside. Wash the pet bedding hot. Keep the pet on a vet-recommended flea treatment, because a pet with no protection is a taxi for the next batch. We will tell you exactly what to do and when, and we will tell you up front that you may still see a few fleas for a week or two after treatment as the last pupae hatch into a house that now kills them. That is expected. It is not the treatment failing.
Fleas and the rest of the house
Fleas are on our general pest control list for a reason. A house with fleas and no pet usually has something else going on, and a house with a pet usually has a few other things the pet has brought to the door. If we find mice, a wildlife entry point or a damp crawl space while we are there, we will tell you, because fixing that is what keeps the fleas from coming back next fall.
If you are scratching your ankles reading this, do not wait for the problem to burn itself out, because in a heated house it will not, and if something has moved in under the floor it will get worse. Give New River Pest Control LLC a call or text at (540) 818-9375 and we will come look. Bring the dog along to the door when we get there. He knows where the fleas are better than anybody.
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(540) 818-9375