Fleas and ticks most often enter your home on your four-legged best friends. If you catch the problem early, you can prevent an annoyance from becoming a serious problem for you and your pets.
Flea and tick removal is a must because both can do a lot of harm. The most common of these little pests, fleas, can bite your dog or cat over 400 times per day, consume more than its own weight in your pet’s blood, and lay hundreds of eggs on your pet that can be spread around your home. Once you treat your pet, their blood is poisonous to fleas, so they turn to you, the next thing on their menu. In the worst case, fleas can bite you, cover your home in with tiny eggs no bigger than grains of sand, give your pet tapeworm, cause your pet to scratch his skin bare, and infect your pet with nasty diseases you can catch as well.
Unlike fleas, which can be brushed off, ticks dig into the skin, which make removal tricky. If you try to remove them from your pet or yourself, you risk breaking off the head, so the tick can still irritate and infect the victim. Ticks feed on your pet and then fall off to lay anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 eggs. Within their life cycle, ticks repeatedly look for a tasty new host. Aside from giving a pinching bite, they can pass along Lyme’s disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and ehrlichiosis to both your pet and you.
Since the most common first symptom of illness caused by a tick is a fever, you should check with your veterinarian about all diseases ticks might carry in your area.
When your pets are outside, they may pick up fleas from other dogs or cats, raccoons, opossums, or rats. Since fleas love dark, moist areas such as lawns, refuse piles, and undersides of lawn furniture as well as shrubs and plants, your pet can attract fleas by doing what pets do – rolling around in the grass and sniffing things that interest them.
Ticks lurk in wooded areas, shrubs, brush, and wild undergrowth, and position themselves to jump onto passing pets or humans. They tend to go for areas with little hair for easy dining.
You can avoid walking in wooded areas during tick season, and keep your lawn trimmed, but fleas and ticks always present a risk to pets that go outside. You should protect your pets with a flea and tick collar or other treatments recommended by your veterinarian. The best and safest flea and tick removal method is to inspect your pet regularly after he has been outside and comb him with a flea comb.
The Internet is full of home remedies for flea and tick removal, even when their presence in your home has reached infestation level. Some are innocuous (i.e., bathing them in Dawn dishwashing soap, covering your carpet with salt and spraying with water), but others are usually ineffective or even dangerous.
In Colorado, fleas and ticks are less of a threat than in more humid climates. If you have your pets treated at the beginning of flea and tick season, you are less likely to have a problem that calls for professional flea and tick removal. Some veterinarians suggest year-round vigilance to ward off fleas and ticks in all areas.
When things get out of hand, fleas and ticks can infest your home. Budget Pest control can help with safe, effective, environmentally-friendly solutions for flea and tick removal. We will come to your home and rid it of fleas and ticks present at the time. Our products have a residual effect so that future generations of these pests are history, too. For your peace of mind, we offer a 100 day guarantee against future infestations.