A few stories from the call center

[TheSHAD0W]

Cheap, effective flea remedy: Jumper your furnace thermostat and get the temperature up to 110 degrees for a couple of hours. This will kill all the fleas.

(Yes, you'll need to move the pets out temporarily, unless you like baked animals!)

[celticgrl]

Lemon juice and lavender work well also if the infestation isnt to bad. If it is bad Adams Fleas products are the best I wouldnt touch anything with the name Hartz on it with a ten foot pole.

[pitmonkey]

For fleas: vacuum vacuum vacuum and then vacuum again.

[raudf]

I'm using Frontline on my bratty ratties, after having talked to their vet when we had a bad flea outbreak due to the heat. Just dab a q-tip with the stuff onto the back of their neck and it works like a charm. Makes it so much easier to treat the rats and the cats at the same time.

I've heard spreading salt and leaving it in fabrics and carpets for 24 hours works to kill fleas too. I haven't tried this to find out, mostly because a few of the more science based sites seem to think it's still the vacuuming that gets the fleas and not the salt. I'm also always on the look out for alternatives to flea sprays because while they don't break me out in a rash, they do cause what feels and looks like mild swelling. Benadryl helps with it, so yeah.. might be an allergy to it. *shrug*

We do use a carpet powder for the floor and given how I react to the sprays, my hubby sprays the inside of a trash bag and dumps the canister into that bag to limit contact. One treatment like this and there's a noticeable reduction in fleas. A week of this and I can usually bring any outbreak to it's knees.

[PepperElf]

fleas:

pooch picked them up while visiting my bf's family (at least that's where i think she got them from cos she didn't have them prior).

they wouldn't go away even with flea treatment so we ended up switching to advantix and then spraying her bedding with some heavy duty stuff, and washing all her blankets. since then it's been a couple of months and i've found 1 or 2 fleas only.

[wagegoth]

Lemongrass works awesomely against fleas, and smells nice too.

We had one of those Raid flea catchers (that have, of course, since been discontinued). It was a small light behind a green screen with a tray in front with sticky papers. The fleas would jump at the light at night, bounce off, fall into the tray and be stuck.

I mentioned the flea catcher here one time before, and several people suggested similar homemade versions, involving small lamps or a light behind a piece of glass and bowls of water in front of the light with a drop of detergent in them (breaks the surface tension so the fleas sink instead of floating on the water).

The fleas were gone in a few days. No poison, no flea bombs, nothing dangerous.

If it was bad, we also used the spot treatments like Advantix or Frontline. Just make sure the pet is healthy before applying.

[TheCheerfulTreeRat]

I've heard that diatomaceous earth can help

I'm exceedingly fond of DE, it's maybe not as fast as an insecticide but is massively safer. You can even get it in food grade, it's used to treat grain in silos.

110 doesn't sound too hot - it equates to only 43 Celsius - I had a quick nose about and couldn't see what temperature nukes them, it may help to know that with Bed Bugs they die at 56 Celsius, so a 60 degree wash is enough to kill any eggs, juveniles or adults on clothing, bedding etc. Dry Cleaning also kills them at all stages of their life cycle.

Vacuuming is definitely a good idea, preferably a vacuum with a HEPA filter and seal and discard the bag afterwards.