It’s a common misconception that you have to have a cat or a dog for ticks or fleas to enter your house. This is not true! Ticks and fleas can enter your house by people or by bringing items into your home. Although ticks and fleas affect pets more often than humans, they have been known to cause illness in people. They can carry diseases like Lyme disease, Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Babesiosis, tularemia, and much more. If you believe that you have a tick or flea problem in your house, call Advanced Pest and Termite.
Fleas
Fleas are parasites that like to feed on the blood of any warm-blooded body. They lay hundreds of eggs in their lifetime and reach adulthood in 5 days. Adult fleas are the ones that affect people and animals. The most common flea is the cat flea.
Fleas not only affect household pets, but they like other wild animals as well. They have powerful legs that allow them to jump from one body to the next. Fleas can jump as high as 8 inches vertically and 16 inches horizontally.
Fleas can often be found in pant legs, shoes, and on blankets, which is how they get transported from one environment to the next.
They are known to carry diseases with them, and people can get sick when fleas bite them if the flea came off an infected animal. Fleas can also cause allergies in pets, along with tapeworms and anemia.
Ticks
There are over 867 different tick species in the world. The three common ticks found in North America are the American dog tick, blacklegged (deer) tick, and the brown dog tick. Out of these three ticks, the brown dog tick is not known to spread diseases to humans, but they can still cause diseases in dogs.
Ticks are often found near vegetation in wooded areas, but they can also be found in your yard. To keep ticks away from your house, be sure to cut your grass, thin out vegetation close to wooded areas, trim back overhanging shrubs and trees, and remove fallen leaves from your yard.
Like fleas, ticks feed on the blood of mammals, but they also feed on birds and reptiles. Ticks not only cause animals to get sick but humans as well. They are known to carry diseases like Lyme disease, and these disease-carrying ticks will infect everyone they bite.
If you think you have fleas or ticks in your home or office, call Advanced Pest and Termite today!
