Tick and Flea infestation in your home: Take action

Posted by Zeke on May 02, 2008 at 14:13:02:

Getting over your fear of poison control sprays is easier when the very value of you home is at stake. Even though my Orkin man said my tick infestation was "light", he also said they can be very hard to get rid of and would take months of daily vigilance. If your house has been invaded. ie, you have found multiple ticks over a spread of 3-4 days, here's what you must do:
[1] Treat your animals, and as difficult as this may sound, keep them out of the house and confined to one treatable area of the yard. No matter how meticulous your exploration, you will not find every tick they may pick up during their outside time. Treat the pet! 3 Capstar pills and 3 K9 Advantix treatments over a 11- day period still did not keep ticks from attaching to my dog.
[2] BUY A TICK TWISTER at your pet store or online. You can safely remove ticks from pets and humans without their saliva being injected into the flesh and without leaving their mouth parts embedded. This tool is a god-send for both humans and pets, and a video is posted on youtube.com.
[3] Ticks and fleas love crevasses, so it took weeks of work on my part to discover where they might be secreted. Getting them before they can lay eggs is imperative, but almost impossible. My dressers were infested, and fearing the impending hatching of the tick eggs after the ticks had been spray-killed, I bought HUSKY DRUM LINERS [clear] at Home Depot and placed clothes in a bag, closed it tightly with twist ties, then placed that bag in a second bag and closed that. I placed the bags outdoors in a very sunny area and the heat buildup within the bag killed the eggs. I left them there for 5 days to be sure. The second bag is vital as the air pocket between the two bags offers insulation to keep the heat in and the inside temperature high. Place anything you can fit into the Husky bags: dresser drawers, bedding, Cds and DVDs, boxes of papers...it's amazing where they will hide.
Large objects, such as my clothes dresser itself, were wrapped in plastic doubled drop cloths, taped shut, and placed in the sun as well.
This was a LOT of work, but as the weeks went by and I still found ticks, and read horror stories online of people having to move out of their homes, I knew I needed to take drastic action to stop this problem in its tracks.
4] Your pet should not be allowed in the house for 6 weeks, so that if eggs hatch [they take 2-5 weeks], there will be no host to feed on. I realize how difficult this sounds, and I myself balked at the idea for two weeks, but finally had to agree it was the only solution to stop the life cycle of this hideous little vampire pest.

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