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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Ben’s pest control podcast. It is a new year 2022. And let me start by saying Happy New Year to you all. A new year in Florida. Obviously that means January and January is one of our cooler months. Part of the reason that the snowbirds love to come to Florida this time of the year is because even though it’s cool for us, for them, it’s still beautiful and warm. However, there are some pest control issues that can arise from these these days and the weather we’re seeing and one of those things that can arise is flees. Not a lot of people realize this, but when it actually does get somewhat cooled down here, we do have heat and people will turn the heat on in their homes, some people will start a fire in the fireplace if they have one. I don’t know too many homes that really need fireplaces in Florida, but there are some that have them. But when you turn on the heat, what happens is is you create this perfect environment for the fleas that may be there to hatch out and all sudden explode inside of your home. So let me go back here a little bit. Normally, what happens in these situations is we get a customer who’s had a flea problem sometime during the last six to nine months and the fleas were in their house and really bad and the the female fleas will lay eggs into the carpet. And those eggs will sit there and they will wait for the perfect situation to hatch out and then invade the homeowners or the homeowners pets. And the one of those things can be just turning on the heat in the house, the heat can drive the temperature up to a warmer than normal situation. So when I say that most of the year in Florida with if we are in the 1980s. A lot of people set their air conditioning units at 78. Some people go as low as 72. So the house pretty much has a an average temperature that stays fairly consistent. And that temperature is controlled, of course by the air conditioning. While in winter, that’s the one time of the year that people want it to be a little bit warmer, they’re cold, so they turn it up. And as the temperature rises, all sudden you get this perfect situation where all of those eggs, all of the flea eggs that are sitting in the carpet. Now son say this is a great time, let’s hatch and go crazy. And we had a call just this week, the inside of a house was absolutely overrun by fleas. I myself walked into the house. And within just a minute of being in the house, I want to say I had 5060 fleas on my pants. It was unbelievable. So this is a situation where the people had had fleas earlier in the year last year. And they thought they were under control. And they appear to be under control for a better part of three or four months. And now all sudden the heat gets kicked on in the house and boom, there’s just six explosion, all those as all those eggs hatch. So you got to be prepared. That is one of the downfalls that we can definitely run into this time of the year. What I would say to you is we tell all of our customers that have fleas, one of the things that’s important is they really need to vacuum their carpets regularly, the running of the vacuum will hopefully help cause those eggs to hatch out because of the vibration of the vacuum going over the carpet. And we suggest usually doing that at least once a week, if not more frequently, especially when you’re having the problem. You want to get it vacuumed, vacuumed, vacuumed and keep those eggs hatching so that way it doesn’t turn into a bigger problem down the road. Now in this situation, if if you do have the fleas, of course, the people in this this situation they brought their pets to the house. I guess they use the house as kind of like a small vacation home. They come up on the weekends. from Miami I believe they said and when they got there, they they were going to bring their pets in the house and they were like thank goodness we didn’t because the pets would have just gotten eaten alive. But the fleas were after anything they could get when I went in. I walked in and I was the only thing around for them to eat and so they were hungry and they just went after me. Now
one of the things that’s also common is we get questions like well, how did this happen, how did we get fleas back when the fleas appear to be under control. And one of the things you never want under estimate is with their house. When we got there, we also walked the perimeter of the house and noticed that there were definitely fleas outside. And considerable, not as much as in the house, but a considerable amount to the point where I could see that they were on my pants, and they were on my shirt. So what I would say is, you’ve got to keep in mind that in nature, in general, fleas can run rampant outside, you can have stray cats that carry fleas, rats and mice will carry fleas, the house that I went to, in this situation, they’re across from a park, and the park has a lot of tree lined areas where they actually have walking paths. So it’s almost like a nature preserve back there. And they could even have potentially coyotes in that area. So all of these things that are out there in nature, they can carry fleas, and they can bring them around and deposit them and leave their eggs and, and those fleas right at your doorstep. So never underestimate the the role nature plays. Because nature itself can have a role in the distribution of things like fleas. So you got to keep that in mind. And you got to be prepared when winter comes around that you could have this situation. I can tell you from my own experience that when I was younger, I had an apartment. And I noticed that there were stray cats out on the my back patio. And one day I felt bad for them because they look like they were malnourished. So I went to the store and I bought some cat food and I brought it home. And I thought it’d be a great idea to put the cat food out there to feed the cats. And you know, it started with just one or two cats. And before you knew it, I had three or four cats there. And strangely enough, just from my going in and out of the door and letting the cats be on my patio. One day I came home from work and there were just fleas everywhere in my apartment, it was completely overrun. And thank God I do what I do, because I was able to treat it right away and get rid of them that day. But it’s an example of how nature plays a role in sometimes causing us these pest problems. So if you have a fleet problem and you need someone to come out and take a look, please give us a call at 772-878-1972 Or feel free to check out our website at WWW dot Ben’s pest stop is we’ll be happy to perform one of our free 50 Point pest surveys and analysis for you and let you know what we see and what we recommend. Alright, thank you and have a great day.
